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The Woman Behind The Plant City Fire

Tribune photo by ROBERT BURKE

Angel Lockett remembers little of the night of Feb. 21, 2005, when the fire she started destroyed a half block in downtown Plant City.

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By JAN HOLLINGSWORTH

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 28, 2008

Updated: 09/28/2008 01:12 am

PLANT CITY - About the only thing Angel Lockett remembers clearly about the night that would change her life and so many others in this old railroad town is the smell of stale beer and cigarettes that permeated the little TV repair shop across the street from the Silver Dollar Saloon.

"It was a mess - beer bottles and cigarette butts and ashes all over the floor," said Lockett, who had broken up with the shop's owner, Mark Simpson, a few days before.

For three years, she had kept the books, prepared the tax returns and helped keep his business running.

Simpson did the repairs: TVs, stereos, speakers and other electronics.

"He could fix just about anything," Lockett said. He also played a pretty fair guitar.

Most Saturdays, Simpson and his buddies would have an all-night rip-roaring time in the back of the shop, making music and messes, she said. Come Monday, Lockett would clean up before the shop opened for business.

"I worked hard there with him," she said. "I raised his kids. I felt like I was being walked on."

All of that seemed to come to a head Feb. 21, 2005, as she surveyed the remains of another weekend bash. It was a Monday, Presidents Day, and at 9 p.m. downtown Plant City thrummed with partiers.

Simpson, 48, was across the street, drinking at the Silver Dollar. Lockett, then 58, had put away more than a few herself around the corner at a bar called Cuzzins.

Standing in the back room of the shop, where Simpson and his two young sons had lived until Lockett moved them all into her Shannon Avenue home, she noticed the tattered quilt that formed a pallet on the floor.

"It was just a worn-out quilt," she said. "How it caused all that, I'll never know."

Later, in news reports and rumors, the quilt would become a cot, then a bed, with all the intrigue that might imply. That was the part that bothered her most - the question of intent, the perception of a woman scorned.
Lockett had survived a shooting, a heart attack and eight failed marriages. But the former chairman of Plant City's monthly Strawberry Classic Car Show, the woman who had attended the rebirth of the downtown historical district, did not know how to cope with the wrath of a community and the consequences of one tragic moment in time.

"Sometimes I feel like it was a real bad dream that never goes away," she said. "Disbelief - I guess that's how I live with myself as well as I do."

Hidden Danger

The first alarm sounded at 9:45 p.m.

Plant City Fire Rescue dispatched two engines and two rescue units.

Four minutes later, 11 firefighters arrived at Collins Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. They found thick black smoke pouring from Mark Electronics.

Capt. Vince Kiffner called for backup, then plunged into the inferno.

Inside, the heat was intense, the smoke impenetrable, banking from floor to ceiling.

"We couldn't see anything," Kiffner said. "But we knew the fire was above us. It had to be."

Outside, a second crew of firefighters mounted an assault from the roof, preparing to cut into the structure to vent the smoke and toxic gases from the century-old building.

They didn't know there was a roof below that one and another roof below that, the result of multiple renovations over the years.

The fire was rolling through the voids between the three roofs, spreading rapidly and out of reach.

"They didn't realize the fire was right under them," Kiffner said.

Firefighters from Hillsborough County and two municipalities came to help. Tampa and Lakeland sent aerial trucks.

"We will risk our lives to save lives," Plant City Fire Rescue Chief George Shiley said. "But you have to be cautious that you don't risk someone's life if there is no hope of saving that building."

Even if the building is filled with priceless antiques, irreplaceable documents and a community's fondest memories.

Four businesses shared the partitioned one-story structure that housed Mark Electronics.

Next door, another 8,000-square-foot building contained the Olde Village Shoppes, a quaint collection of some 40 vendors offering jewelry, arts and crafts.

With no sprinkler system and only one fire wall to slow it down, the fire roared through them all.

To the east, a narrow alley separated the fire from the rest of the buildings on the block. To the north, a solid wall, three bricks thick, stood between the burning buildings and the beloved Whistle Stop Cafe.

That is where firefighters made their stand.

"We didn't want it to get into the Whistle Stop," Shiley said.

Into The Fire
Lockett was back at Cuzzins, shooting pool with friends, when the fire engines arrived.

About 45 minutes had passed since her brief visit to Mark Electronics.

She would later tell investigators she went into her estranged boyfriend's business to retrieve a phone number. She said she wasn't angry, just disgusted with Simpson, with the mess, with the whole sad situation.

She and Simpson would have their spats, she said. But they would always patch things up in two or three days.

This time was different, though, she told them. Three days before the fire, the two had an argument that ended with Simpson breaking an antique mirror that belonged to her mother.
Lockett called police and asked Simpson to leave.

"He'd never gotten violent before," she said.

She knew he was across the street at the Silver Dollar when she let herself into the TV repair shop. She didn't remember much about the few minutes she spent there, she told fire investigators. But she thought she might have thrown a cigarette butt on the quilt.

"I was drinking pretty much that night, but not so much not to notice that my car was parked next to a fire," Lockett said. "There was my van in the middle of these flames, and I started running."

Hours before, she had parked her van by Simpson's shop, in front of a John Briggs train depot mural that was, for decades, a Plant City landmark.

As she raced toward her van, Lockett was stopped by a fireman. The van, he said, was now part of a crime scene.

Living History

Jerry Lofstrom got the call about 10 p.m., 15 minutes after the first alarm: The Whistle Stop is burning, the caller told him.

"What a frightful ride that was from Valrico," said Lofstrom, who had staked his claim in downtown Plant City's future a decade before when he opened the popular cafe in the budding commercial historical district.

Lofstrom and his wife, Marti, stood with Plant City Mayor Mike Sparkman as the blaze lit the night sky.

Lofstrom was relieved, however, to discover the caller who summoned him had been wrong. The Whistle Stop wasn't burning.

Situated on a corner of Collins and J. Arden Mays Boulevard, the cafe served as a bridge between the city's past and its future.

During the first half of the 20th century, downtown was the center of the Plant City universe. Farmers and their families would pour in from Knights, Springhead, Dover, Hopewell, Antioch and other outlying communities every Saturday night to shop for groceries, do their banking, and visit with friends and neighbors.

A major destination for many area residents during the 1930s and 1940s was Rogers and Middlebrooks, the Wal-Mart of its time. Later, it became a Belk-Lindsey department store.

At the cusp of the 21st century, the building enjoyed a nostalgic incarnation as the Olde Village Shoppes.

By the 1960s, though, downtown Plant City was on the decline, its historical buildings left to deteriorate as residents took their business to the suburbs.

Decades later, local preservationists secured a place on the National Register of Historic Places for much of downtown.

The Lofstroms were among the first to infuse money and new life into the city's heritage, purchasing multiple downtown buildings, including the Rogers and Middlebrooks building next to the Whistle Stop.

David and Vicki Hawthorne soon bought the old department store from the Lofstroms and set about creating a new downtown dynasty.

Eight years later, David Hawthorne sat on the curb across the street and wept as firefighters hosed the charred and twisted wreckage that was once the Olde Village Shoppes.

Her Own Creation

David Hawthorne was born and raised in the eastern Hillsborough County community of Knights on a farm his ancestors homesteaded in the 1840s.

"I left to go make my fortune as soon as I got out of the Army," he said.

When he returned decades later, his new bride was enchanted with the historical feel of the place - and saddened by the beautiful downtown buildings fading to ruins.

The old department store next to the Whistle Stop had potential, Vicki Hawthorne decided.

"The concept was an old turn-of-the-century European village with brick walkways, fountains, a ceiling painted like a sky with birds; the columns were trees," she said.

Vendors lined up to rent kiosks at the Olde Village Shoppes, which opened in October 1997.

"I had very little to do with any of it," David Hawthorne said. "She Vicki was the brains, the energy, the talent of that."

His wife did, however, have an eager and industrious helper in Lockett.

"She was part of Olde Village Shoppes from the beginning," Vicki Hawthorne said. "She approached me after the press did an article about our plans."
Lockett worked tirelessly to bring Hawthorne's vision to fruition. After helping get the village up and running, she opened and closed the store, assisted vendors, rang up sales and became involved in promoting the downtown business district.

About four years before the fire, though, Lockett and the Hawthornes parted ways.

"She used to be on time and very conscientious. Then she started calling in sick. There were mood swings. It progressively spiraled down until I let her go," Vicki Hawthorne said.
Lockett said she was struggling with a back injury and other ailments for which she now collects disability. She said she doesn't understand what went wrong between them.

By then, Lockett had paired up with Simpson and eventually began working with him at his shop in the building next door. After years of sobriety, she was drinking again.

"For all the years that I was friends with her, I didn't know her to drink a drop," said Lockett's best friend, Dori Lambert, who has known her for two decades. "She'd told me stories about herself and that she was a recovering alcoholic, but it was hard for me to imagine her that way."

Simpson, said Lambert, was Lockett's first relationship in many years.

"I don't feel she ever would have started drinking again had she not gotten involved with Mark."

An Unusual Suspect

Plant City residents woke to news of the fire the following morning, sending shock waves through the community.

Shortly after dawn, cars began to line the downtown streets as spectators came to assess the damage. Some collected charred bricks to keep as mementos.

Others expressed relief to see the Whistle Stop still standing on the north corner.

Miraculously, on the south corner, a single wall - the one with the Briggs mural - had survived the inferno that reduced everything around it to rubble.

No one was killed or injured in the fire, and losses were estimated at $2 million to $3 million.

The Hawthornes picked through the ruins, trying to salvage what they could. Photos, mementos, fine antiques they had bought in France - all were lost.

"It wasn't like a commercial building burning down; it was more like having your house burn down," David Hawthorne said.

The same was true for the vendors who lost everything in the fire. Few, if any, had insured their personal inventory.

"Emotions were very high. It was ugly," Hawthorne said.

Among the most distressed were the people who assumed the irreplaceable family heirlooms they had brought to jeweler Joe Grimes for repair had been destroyed with the rest of the Olde Village Shoppes.

Grimes discovered his safe in the rubble.

"That safe roasted for six or seven hours, and still the gold was safe," he said.

The jeweler set up a bench across the street from the fire and spent weeks reuniting his customers with their treasures.

One couple, married 70 years, were certain their wedding bands had been lost in the fire. "They started crying when I gave them back to them," Grimes said.

Angel In Exile

Through it all, grim-faced fire investigators worked to unravel the cause of the blaze, which they had labeled arson. Statements from Simpson and others already had led them to a person of interest.
Lockett couldn't eat, sleep or concentrate. Mostly everything was a blur, she said.

Two days after the fire, investigators brought her in for questioning.

Hours later, Lockett wrote out a confession.

It detailed her relationship with Simpson, the violent argument that led to their breakup, her visit to the shop.

"I was in an emotional state," she wrote. "I threw a cigarette on his quilts, thinking it would burn a hole and show him I didn't appreciate his treatment and abuse.

"If God is my witness, I never intended harm. There is no forgiveness for what I've done."

When a newspaper reported that Lockett faced up to 30 years in prison, Lockett said, Simpson called and begged her to run.

Simpson disappeared right after the fire. He couldn't be reached for comment.
Lockett spent eight months in a Tampa 12-step program called New Beginnings, sponsored by the New Life Pentecostal Church of God.

"It was hard to give up your home, your dogs and cats - leaving them behind," she said. "Luckily I met this fellow right after all this happened. He took care of my house and pets."

Everyone calls him "Elvis," though that's not his real name. "He treats me like a queen," she said.
Lockett pleaded guilty to arson in March 2006. She was sentenced to two years' house arrest and 15 years' probation.

A number of her friends and victims showed up at her sentencing hearing. Many, like Jerry Lofstrom, urged leniency.

"She could have arranged the story any way she wanted to," Lofstrom said later. "But she told the truth, and the truth got her in a lot of trouble. That's just who she is."

Grimes clasped her hand in the courtroom and told her everything would be all right.

"I didn't know Angel very well, but no purpose would be served by sending her to jail," he said.

Circuit Judge Debra Behnke ordered $1 million in restitution.

Each month, $100 from Lockett's meager disability check is split among the many victims.

Some, like Vicki Hawthorne, have little sympathy for Lockett and her fate.

"It just didn't seem fair that you could burn down three-quarters of a block and get house arrest," she said.

Sparkman, the former mayor, said everyone lost something that night.

"It took so much of our heritage," he said.

Momentum Lost

Many of the businesses never recovered. Others scattered to other locations.

Where once there were buildings alive with history and memories, there is now a void that many say scars the heart of the commercial historic district.

"Honestly I think the fire changed my whole perspective about downtown," David Hawthorne said.

Efforts to re-invent the site never took hold, he said. Perhaps someone someday will be inspired, as he once was, to rebuild there.

"But, to quote Bob Dylan, 'It ain't me, Babe.'"
Lockett emerged this spring from her years of house arrest to her own tenuous renewal. Other than visits from a few close friends, her world had contracted to embrace Elvis and her animals.

She's uncomfortable walking the streets of her adopted hometown.

"It feels like everyone's looking at me, like they all hate me," she said.

Mostly, she feels invisible.

She'd like to work, even if it's just part time, but no one wants to hire a felon, she said.

"I've worked my entire life, and I don't have much to show for it except my reputation. And in just one night I've lost it, and I'll probably never be able to get it back again."

Tribune researcher Buddy Jaudon contributed to this report.

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