JANIE GOULD

Newly elected Vero Beach City Council member Amelia Graves says two things led to her victory:  the public’s distaste for “outside influences” in local politics, and the old-fashioned style of door-to-door campaigning that she and her volunteer workers employed.

Florida Power and Light Co. funneled $28,000 to a political action group, Citizens for a Brighter Future, in an effort to re-elect Vice Mayor Tracy Carroll. Instead, Carroll was turned out of office Nov. 5 by top vote getters Graves and incumbent Richard Winger, who became mayor.

“I think it’s important we don’t let outside influences dictate how to run this community,” Graves said. “I think people underestimated me from the beginning. I think they thought I had a lack of experience. I don’t think they did their due diligence, to see what I could bring to the table.”

Graves, 30, also gave credit to the volunteers who campaigned for her. Two of her closest friends, Kristy Polackwich and Curtis Carpenter, worked practically around the clock, she said.

“I would say we were the three amigos,” Graves said. “Kristy worked every single day on the campaign, every single day. Some days I would have 12 people out knocking on doors. Some days it would be just me knocking. It was back to the basics!”

She estimates they knocked on 1,000 doors all over town, including 600 in the final two days of the campaign.  She said they found a common thread among voters they met: they want to be able to take pride in their homes and community.

She became interested in running for a seat on the council earlier this year when she was working for Main Street Vero Beach and was able to observe “the dynamics” of the council. But what really got her attention was the refusal by Carroll and then-Mayor Craig Fletcher, in June, to vote for a proclamation  in support of Humanists Recognition Week.

“Nationally, Vero ended up looking like this narrow-minded bigoted community that was stuck in another era,” said Graves, who said she heard about it from friends all over the country.

Now, she said her goals for the city include protecting the city-owned Crestlawn Cemetery by incorporating it into the municipal charter, to insure it could never be sold or leased.

“It’s sacred ground,” she said.

Graves also said she would like to see more support for parks and recreation, including the dog park. As for the sale of the electric system to FPL, she said, “People want lower power bills. Period.”

“We signed the contract,” she said. “We’ve got to move forward on it. The issue has been dividing us for

quite some time. It’s time to move forward.”

She thinks the local economy could be bolstered with some savvy marketing that promotes the town as a great place for people to raise families while telecommuting to jobs in cities.  She said she has many friends who want to return to their hometown to enjoy Vero’s quality of life but don’t want to give up good jobs elsewhere.

“I also have friends who work in New York, in Atlanta, in Germany, but they live here,” she said. “They do it through their computers or fly out every now and then.”

Growing up in Vero Beach was “a dream” for Graves, a fifth-generation native of Indian River County. She says she made lifelong friends here, starting when she attended Maitland Farms Preschool and continuing through her 2001 graduation from Vero Beach High School, where she played on the soccer and lacrosse teams. She has fond memories of going to Skatetown, the beach, Swenson’s for ice cream and the Ocean Grill for special occasions.

“It was great having extended family here,” she said. “I always had someone to do something with, or someone to play with. We always went to my grandmother’s house for breakfast before school.”

But her outlook on life changed dramatically when she was 19 and attending the University of Florida. One night a doctor called her from Atlanta, telling her that her father had fallen into a coma. He later died of AIDS. Graves, his only adult relative, was responsible for settling his affairs.

“At 19, it put so many things in perspective, she said. “The rose colored glasses came off, and I’m really glad they did. I honestly don’t know where my life would have gone if that had not happened. I wasn’t selfish, but I was very naïve.”

At that point, she said she start focusing on service to others and not getting caught up in keeping up with the Joneses. Her outlook became global.

Graves earned a bachelor’s degree in history at UF in 2007. She later taught English in Thailand and then worked four months at a shelter in a Cambodian village where HIV and TB were rampant and sanitation was nil. She was waiting for an acceptance letter to serve in Nicaragua with an aid group called Manna Project International.  She was accepted for the program and began a one-year stint in 2009.

Students at Vanderbilt University, including Angela Profeta of Vero Beach, founded Manna to provide assistance to some of the poorest people of the Western Hemisphere.  Nicaragua ranks as the second poorest country in the West.

For nearly 10 years, Manna workers helped provide food and medical care to some 1,500 people who lived in a landfill near Managua, Nicaragua’s capital. Graves said the residents of La Chureca made their homes, with mud floors and a tarp as the roof, amid toxic waste and garbage and smoke from fires that never stopped smoldering. Everything they possessed, from cooking pots to clothes, they got by sorting through mounds of garbage delivered to the dump every day.

“Women gave birth in these homes,” Graves said. “The babies were breathing the smoke from the moment of their birth. Our job was to try to move children out of a state of malnourishment or undernourishment.”

Graves, now working as a part-time researcher for her mother, a lawyer, wants to go to medical school and then practice medicine locally.

In October, the island weekly published a story questioning Graves’ qualifications to hold office, citing gaps in her resume and the lack of a solid career path.  The weekly challenged her assertion that she has been accepted into a master’s program in public health at UF.  The paper also characterized her work in Nicaragua as a continuation of the college experience with sightseeing on the itinerary.

“They diminished not just me, but all the people with Manna who had worked incredibly hard,” Graves  said. “I challenge anyone who would think that to spend one single day — one day – where we spent a year.”

Graves has filed a lawsuit against the island weekly.

“They’re not informing the community,” she said. “They’re dividing the community. This is a town in which people care about each other. Even if we don’t agree with each other, we’re kind to each other, at least that’s the way I was raised.”

A few days before the election, the island weekly called her lawsuit a desperate ploy to resurrect her “fast fading City Council campaign.”