‘Screw You, Vandals’: After ATV Theft, Swift Huge Gifts Put Turtle Patrol Back on Wheels in Marineland

After having to patrol the beaches on foot for a week after its ATV was stolen, the Volusia-Flagler Turtle Patrol in Marineland is back on wheels. The cost of its replacement ATV was covered by a $5,000 gift from long-time Turtle Patrol supporters Al Hadeed, the former county attorney, and his wife Maureen, who had been patrol volunteers in the past. 

The Patrol is also the recipient of an additional, possibly larger pledge by an anonymous donor, and the nonprofit’s Gofundme page raised almost $3,000, including $500 from Gail Wilson. 

“Screw you, screw you, literally screw you, vandals,” Hadeed said. “We’re not going to have the Turtle Patrol miss a single day. And if they are caught, I assure you that I will make my way to the microphone with the court and testify to the damage to the public interest that they wrought, whoever was responsible.”

The ATV was stolen in daylight on June 17 from a shack behind the building in Marineland where it’s been housed for months. 

“I found out through my wife,” who’d read the report about the theft here, Hadeed said today, “and she was upset, and when I read it, I was even more upset than what she first described to me. I just couldn’t believe it. It was wicked, it was dastardly, it was terrible. I was pleased to see that law enforcement was going to do everything it could to pursue and prosecute these people. But it’s such an innocent, loving, devoted entity that relies on volunteers and goes to the very heart of our identity, which is having wonderful rural beaches where sea turtles nest. So I just thought it was terrible.” 

Hadeed contacted people he knew to contribute as well and suggested to the Patrol to use his money as a challenge for others to match. An ATV typically costs in the range of $13,000. The Patrol buys them used. 

The Volusia-Flagler Turtle Patrol is made up of subgroups, each responsible for a segment of beach in the two counties. The group in Marineland patrols the area from Marineland, north of the rocky break, to Summer Haven in St. Johns County. Patrol volunteers work every morning starting at dawn, marking and protecting every new nest with sticks and ribbons, documenting it, and sending the data to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). The Turtle Patrol’s iPad used for data gathering was also stolen during the heist in Marineland. 

On foot, a job that takes a couple of hours with an ATV can stretch into the afternoon. Julie Buffington, who volunteers in that stretch of about two miles, had 13 to 14 “crawls,” or new nests, one of the mornings she patrolled on foot. The Marineland group got the new ATV last week. 

“So he called me that day, or the day after,” the Turtle Patrol’s Lori Ottlein said, referring to Al Hadeed. “He’s been supportive of us since we started this 26 years ago, when we had some crazy stuff that went down from driving on the beach and stuff, and he pretty much has been with us for all those years, doing whatever we needed to do. He got the band going, I mean, he’s just helped a whole lot.” 

In August 2005, when the Patrol was in its early days, Turtle Patrol volunteer Denis Cody was patrolling on his ATV near Varn Park, north of Flagler Beach, when a sheriff’s deputy slapped him with a ticket for driving on the beach, a second-degree misdemeanor with up to a $500 fine and 60 days in jail. The County Commission had outlawed ATVs on the beach the previous year, after ignoring protests from FWC. 

Cody, a 53-year-old retiree at the time, challenged the ticket, with Hadeed as his attorney. Ten months later, then-County Judge Sharon Atack ruled in a non-jury trial prosecuted by Assistant State Attorney Scott Westbrook in favor of Cody, acquitting him of the charge. “More than half the nests could not be protected due to an attempted ban on ATVs,” Hadeed had argued at the time. 

“I respect what they do,” Hadeed said today. “They are a very important volunteer corps, and I know that the citizens of Flagler County, to the best I know, strongly support sea turtle conservation efforts.”

The new ATV will not be kept at the building known as the Coastal Policy Center in Marineland, a private property owned by Atlanta-based developer Jim Jacoby, who owns several parcels in Marineland and had allowed the group and others to use the building as office space. For now, the new ATV is being kept at an individual’s house, in a location as undisclosed as Dick Cheney’s once was. As for the future: “They’re going to build or get another shed, a better shed, and put it across the street on Marineland property,” Ottlein said. 

The theft of the ATV was part of an ongoing crime spree in Marineland that has consisted of a series of vandalisms and thefts. The latest: someone with a white pick-up truck stole all the fish in the pond behind the Whitney Lab building–the very place where the Sea Turtle Hospital is located.