Mommy is a very savvy Marketing person!
Squeezing a spat for all it's worth
The real story of the 6-year-old and her lemonade stand is nothing like the tale that made national headlines. A neighborhood feud and savvy marketing made sure of that.
By CHUCK MURPHY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published July 17, 2003
NAPLES - As portrayed nationwide, the story of the little lemonade girl, the nasty neighbor and big, ugly government goes something like this:
A 6-year-old girl in sweltering Southwest Florida tries to make a little summer money by starting a lemonade stand. A crabby neighbor demands that the stand be licensed or shut down. Heavy-handed police officers force the child out of business.
Finally, stingy city officials cave to public pressure and grant the license - for free.
But the reality of Avigayil Wardein's lemonade adventure is different from the story repeated on national radio and television shows, and ultimately distorted on talk radio and around the world via the Internet.
For starters, police didn't really shut down the stand, much less arrest any children, as some have claimed. And the city had granted the license without a fee long before the first word about the controversy was broadcast or printed.
In truth, it's a rather pedestrian tale of a long-running neighborhood dispute over a carport radio and a neighbor who retaliated for months of complaints from next door by reluctantly asking police to check on the stand.
And if it hadn't given the city of Naples such a nationwide black eye as America's anti-Mayberry, police Chief Steven Moore would only chuckle at what everyone calls simply "The Lemonade Case."
"It's really no different from hundreds of complaints that we respond to all the time," Moore said this week. "But the mother has done an excellent job of marketing this."
The mother is KC Shaw, 49, a savvy, polished technology consultant. Her neighbor is Sheila Lewis, a 52-year-old Realtor who has consistently refused to grant interviews. She also declined to comment for this story.
Shaw moved into the little home south of Naples' postcard-perfect downtown about three years ago. And for a year or so, she and Lewis apparently got along fine.
But Shaw became annoyed by Lewis' habit of playing a radio outside, beneath her carport. And, despite a large, palm hedge separating Lewis' carport from Shaw's, the radio could still be heard next door.
"When she would play her music too loud, I would call her and she would comply and turn it down," Shaw said this week. "But at some point, I guess she got tired of me calling and she told me not to call her again.
"So I really have had no choice but to use the police for volume control."
Naples police records show that Shaw has called police six times since October to complain about Lewis' radio. Each time, police arrived and asked that the volume be turned down or found that it already was. Then they left.
Lewis has called police just once about Shaw. But her call made it all the way to the Late Show with David Letterman.
Here's some of what the world has had to say about Lewis since then:
"Un-American." - Orlando Sentinel columnist Myriam Marquez.
"I hope (Avigayil) is leaving the lemon peels on her neighbor's, you know, driveway." - CNN anchor Kyra Phillips.
"Probably a Democrat." - Syndicated radio host Neal Boortz.
The call Lewis made contradicts many of the accounts on the Internet and the airwaves. For starters, a recording of the call makes it clear that Lewis never demanded that the stand be closed or anyone be cited. And she made no effort to disguise her motivation.
"She calls the police on me if my father turns the radio on once over there. . . . So I mean, she drives me just nuts. Now today she's got her little 5-year-old out there, unattended, with a stand. Right at the corner," Lewis told a dispatcher. "Could you just like send the guys there . . . and at least tell them that she is supposed to have a permit so she doesn't start doing this every day this year."
For her part, Shaw acknowledges that she knew the call was coming. As she was setting up the stand with Avigayil and other neighborhood children on the morning of Friday, June 13, Lewis came out and asked if she had a permit, Shaw recalled.
"I said, "It's a lemonade stand, Sheila. I don't need a permit,' " Shaw said. "Then she said she was going to call the police. She said, "Now you'll know how it feels.' "
It took just a few minutes for Shaw to recognize the potential in that confrontation.
By Shaw's account, a neighbor, whose child was also working at the stand, ran inside to call a local television station before police had even arrived. The station passed on the story - until there was a story.
The widely circulated tale diverges from reality here again. Though it has been reported that Naples police officers shut down the stand, a record of the call says the officers went to the home on ly to advise the mother of the ordinance. Chief Moore cautions that they never even got the chance to act, as Shaw voluntarily closed as soon as the officers arrived.
"When we got there the mother said she would close down the stand until she could get a permit, and that's what she did," Moore said. "People have us actually taking two 6-year-olds in handcuffs. I got an angry e-mail like that today. No one seems really interested in what actually happened."
As for the city caving in to public pressure, well, there was no pressure. By the time Shaw arrived to pick up a permit, city staffers had decided that the fee would be waived and the stand licensed - all before the first story had appeared on television or in the newspaper.
But it wasn't long before.
"As I was leaving City Hall, I saw a camera crew there interviewing someone," Shaw said. "So I gave them my card, and told them, "I have this little human interest story. . . .' "
The local NBC station broadcast a story on June 17. From there, the story went to the station's Web site, to the Matt Drudge Web site, to the Naples Daily News, to the Associated Press and to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, Fox's Bill O' Reilly, CNN, Rush Limbaugh and radio stations and newspapers around the world.
By her count, Shaw has done more than 40 interviews with radio stations across the country. Though the city had waived the permit fee before anyone outside of 11th Avenue S in Naples had ever heard of Avigayil, donations started pouring in. Shaw said she has started a college fund that has "a few hundred dollars."
The money seems to have rubbed some of the other folks on 11th Avenue S the wrong way.
"I bet there are lots of kids in lots of neighborhoods throughout this town (and certainly elsewhere) who would enjoy having free donations for their college education," wrote neighbor Susan Weising in a guest commentary for the Naples Daily News. "Has anyone bothered to check out the facts on whether our now-famous family has any issues with nearby neighbors?"
Others in the area have their own complaints about Shaw, and even Avigayil.
"All these sympathetic letters about Avigayil breaking the law make me sick," wrote Frank Johnson of nearby Bonita Springs. "Let's have all these vehement advocates of lemonade stands, tree houses, ramshackle fruit stalls and Girl Scout cookie booths . . . come out from under their rocks and see a row of these on their streets! And then, watch out "crabby neighbors!' "
While there are four neighborhood children who work the stand regularly, most of the attention, and promotion, has fallen on Avigayil. She went on Letterman, has given countless interviews and is now going to be the national representative for the Kids Only! Sunny Day Play Lemonade Stand ($24.99), a plastic, ready-to-operate lemonade stand. The boxes will soon carry Avigayil's photo.
"It's been a wild ride, and Avi might just get college paid for out of it," Shaw said.
As for Lewis, she has called Chief Moore a couple of times. Once to complain about the media camped on her lawn. Again to complain about lemons being thrown at her house and just to reflect on her anonymous reputation as Osama bin Neighbor.
"Obviously she thinks the attention has all been completely one-sided, but that's because when only one side is speaking, only one side will get the attention," Moore said. "But I thought it would die out after a week. It just keeps going and going on." |
