Welcome to the fifth annual Caron Renaissance gala! (Click on the photo for Michael Price's gallery)

Petra Levin, the chairwoman of Friday’s fifth annual Caron Renaissance gala, said the economy forced her to think outside the box.

How would she attract people to Palm Beach’s Mar-a-Lago willing to pay between $1,000 and $500 for a charity dinner on one of the busiest gala weekends of the year?

“I figured I’d make it less formal than the average Palm Beach gala, and more laid back,” Levin, a former Miss Germany, said during Friday’s wingding.”I thought that’d bring back the husbands, who no longer like the pomp and circumstance by the middle of the season.”

And then, she reached out to Miami singer Jon Secada, who performed for a hour.

Result: Levin had 300-plus helping themselves to fine foods around the pool, then moving to the grand ballroom for Secada’s show.

And by the time the receipts were tallied, the Boca addiction treatment center Caron Renaissance was $1 million richer — money that’ll go mostly to pay for rehab for those who can’t afford it.

Check out the guests by clicking here or on the photo.

Burress, who's serving 20 months on a gun charge.

Retired three-time Super Bowl champ and former Florida Gator star Godfried Myles sums it up best: “There are two places in this country where most football players live:  South Florida, and Arizona. But South Florida’s the place.”

He ain’t kidding. The area is home to thousands of former, and current, NFL players, officials, TV commentators and team owners.

There are actually so many NFLers here that former Dolphins majority owner H. Wayne Huizenga used that fact a few years back when he unsuccessfully tried to talk the league into declaring Dolphin Stadium the permanent home of the Super Bowl.

When gun-toting wide receiver Plaxico Burress is released from jail next year, he’ll probably rebuild his life at home in Lighthouse Point, not too far from where New England Patriots star Randy Moss lives, in a modest $250,000-home in Boca Raton.

And Washington Redskins owner Dwight Schar spends nearly every winter weekend in his $68 million-Palm Beach mansion. Baltimore Ravens financier Steve Bisciotti is at home in Martin County’s Jupiter Island, down the street from Canadian songbird Celine Dion.

Wait, there’s more. Look below, or click (Read more…)

It’s a deal some can’t refuse.

But it’s one that many may ignore.

Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, who staring at $50 million in cuts for the next fiscal year, has made his offer to 117 employees who told him they’d be interested in getting a chunk of change to leave.

In letters sent last week to lieutenants, captains, majors and colonels with more than 20 years on the job, PBSO officials spelled out their offer: two weeks pay for each year worked, capped at one year; a hefty contribution from PBSO toward health care premiums; and some in the upper ranks would get a lump sum equivalent to twice their unused annual leave, which could amount to another to six months’ pay for some.

While the sheriff’s office didn’t comment, PBA union rep John Kazanjian called it “a decent offer.”

Still, he’d be surprised if more than 12 employees take it.

For more, and the poll, look below or click (Read more…)

A little more than a month after golfer Greg Norman and former tennis star Chris Evert made their divorce official, Norman has re-emerged locally after traveling the world in search of business deals.

He’s been to China and Dubai and recently returned to this area — he has homes in Jupiter Island and Boca Raton.

Obviously, he has yet to find a replacement for Evert. He mostly appears in eateries with dudes.

(Ray Graham/The Palm Beach Post)

Norman had lunch Friday at Pizza Al Fresco, a courtyard Italian joint in Palm Beach, with an unidentified elderly gentleman. And dinner at Dolce De Palma in West Palm Beach with, from right to left on the picture above: Anthony De Palma, owner; billionaire entrepreneur Nelson Peltz (in blue sweatshirt, see his breathtaking home here); Norman; and home builder Michael McCloskey.

Norman and DiPalma (Ray Graham/The Palm Beach Post)

The Boca Raton-based National Enquirer over the weekend obtained pictures of golfer Tiger Woods in sex rehab, the first images of him since his Thanksgiving accident and subsequent revelations about his extramarital activities.

The soon-to-be-Jupiter Island resident appears at a distance, walking out of a building on the campus of the Pine Grove Behavioral and Addiction Services in Hattiesburg, Miss. Looking more like a homeless guy, complete with a scruffy face, hooded-sweatshirt around his head and shorts despite the cold weather, Woods is seen carrying a large Styrofoam cup while looking toward the lucky shutterbug.

Click here for the pictures

Before he embarked for Australia, where he won his first match of the Aussie Open today in Sydney, tennis ace Andy Roddick filmed several commercials on the top-flight tennis courts at the Boca Raton tennis community of The Oaks. Roddick, 27, who learned his tennis in Boca, shot several sequences for clothier Lacoste and business consultant SAP. Andy’s people tried to keep it hush-hush, but Page2Live was there. Click on the photo for more. (For a bird’s eye of Andy’s local pied-a-terre, click here)

Norman seems to tell Evert "You're outtahere!" in September at the US Open tennis championship

Links Leviathan Greg Norman and tennis legend Chris Evert, who spectacularly broke up their respective longtime families in order to get hitched, were secretly divorced Dec. 8 in Key West.

They were six months short of their second anniversary!

It was the former world No. 1 female tennis player’s third attempt at holy matrimony. It was the golfer’s second.

Taking advantage of the attention paid by the press to the firestorm surrounding the Tiger Woods accident and sex scandal, the two worked out a quickie settlement behind closed doors.

Then, on the morning of Dec. 8, I’m told by a source in the Florida Keys with access to flight information, the Great White Shark flew to picturesque Key West with his divorce lawyer, Jeff Fisher. Fisher, who also handled Aussie Norman’s divorce from his wife of 25 years, Laura Andrassy, shepherded the paperwork through the courthouse within a couple hours.

Evert, 55, was not present, according to the source. Norman, 54, officially was the complainant.

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

Nearly 40 official public events are planned in South Florida in the two weeks leading to Super Bowl XLIV, Feb. 7 at Land Shark Stadium.

And according to a Super Bowl Host Committee calendar exclusively obtained by Page2Live, at least eight are slated for Palm Beach County.

Some highlights:

JAN. 28, 2010: Delray Beach will host Art & Jazz on the Avenue at Old School Square. The theme of the gallery stroll is football, and organizers are promising to have current and old-school NFL stars mingle with the Great Unwashed.

Elsewhere that day, 30,000 people are expected at the Miami Beach Convention Center for Fan Fest, a pigskin geek gathering with memorabilia shows, booths with all things football and concerts. Also not to be missed is the Battle of the Beauties, a cheerleading competition featuring 26 NFL cheerleaders, at Ocean Manor Resort in Fort Lauderdale.

JAN. 30, 2010: A youth mini-camp is scheduled to take place 8 a.m.-noon at Boca Raton High School. Details are scarce, but don’t be shocked to see a few NFLers there. Old School Square in Delray will be the scene of another NFL meet-and-greet.

Land Shark, meanwhile, will host a flag football competition. Twenty-four teams from across the nation will duke it out for a national championship.

For more, look below or click (Read more…)

(Michele Sandberg/Special to Page2Live)

Strange bedfellows indeed! West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel (the staunch liberal democrat on the left) hung out with Carole Crist, the otherwise solo wife of Gov. Charlie Crist, a GOPer, last night at the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach. Crist and former Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Kerry Murphy Healey served as chairs of a fundraiser for the National Center on Family Homelessness. Palm Beach County Commish Steve Abrams was also among 300-plus in attendance. Check out Michele Sandberg’s gallery:

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Well-known Boca Raton divorce lawyer Doreen Yaffa’s job hasn’t soured her too much. The fetching blond was hitched to Fort Lauderdale karate school owner Jeff Wilson in a sunset ceremony Saturday at the Ritz-Carlton Palm Beach. And she did something that, as a divorce lawyer, she’d frown upon: She married the dude after a four-month courtship! Pre-nup? Unclear. Yaffa divorced her life and business partner, Samuel Yaffa, a year ago.