A decade of trial and triumph

It began with an Ybor City inferno, Flori-duh and 9/11. Sports glory, foreclosures and a downtown rebirth followed. Here's a ranking of the Tampa Bay area's top stories of the first decade of the 21st century.

1. HURRICANES
An unprecedented wave of four hurricanes slammed Florida in 2004. First, Charley struck Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte and headed for Tampa before veering east at the last minute. Jeanne damaged dozens of buildings and toppled hundreds of trees in Polk County. The storms killed 126 statewide, caused an estimated $42 billion damage and drove up property insurance rates for just about everyone.

2. ROLLER-COASTER ECONOMY
Bay area home prices more than doubled during the housing boom, with prices peaking in 2005. By November 2007, local prices were dropping at the fastest rate in the nation. Foreclosures and bankruptcy filings rose during the recession, as did the local unemployment rate, which hit 12.3 percent in November. The economy and hurricanes contributed in 2009 to a 53,000-person drop in Florida's population compared with the year before - the first state decline in 63 years.

3. TERRI SCHIAVO
Thirteen days after her feeding tube was removed, Terri Schiavo, 41, died in 2005 at a Pinellas Park hospice. Doctors said she had been living in a persistent vegetative state for years, and her family's seven-year battle over her right to live or die divided the nation and attracted worldwide attention.

4. CHILD MURDERS
The Bay area was stunned at mid-decade by the slayings of three girls during a 14-month span: Carlie Brucia, 11, of Sarasota; Jessica Lunsford, 9, of Homosassa; and Sarah Lunde, 13, of Ruskin. The killers of Carlie and Jessica, Joseph P. Smith and John Evander Couey, respectively, were sentenced to death, and Couey died this year of cancer. David Lee Onstott was sentenced to life in prison in Sarah's death. Together, their cases prompted lawmakers to toughen laws against the state's more than 36,000 registered sex offenders.

5. THE THRILL OF VICTORY
After decades of professional-sports futility, the Bay area became Titletown as Warren Sapp and the Bucs won their first Super Bowl in 2003 and the Lightning won the Stanley Cup in 2004. Four years later, the formerly dreadful Rays earned their first trip to the World Series. In college sports, USF football ascended to Top 20 heights, Florida State won a football championship and the Florida Gators won four championships, two each in football and basketball.

6. WOMEN IN POWER

Women in the Bay area held positions of authority before 2000, but there were never so many at the same time as in the first decade of the 21st century. Those in high places included Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio; Hillsborough Community College President Gwendolyn Stephenson; Judy Genshaft, USF president; MaryEllen Elia, Hillsborough County schools superintendent; Pat Bean, Hillsborough County administrator; Jane Castor, Tampa police chief; Denise Palmer, publisher of The Tampa Tribune; and Janet Coats, the newspaper's former vice president and executive editor.

7. TERRORISM FEARS

Bill O'Reilly of Fox News Network called USF "a hotbed of support for Arab militants" after federal prosecutors charged professor Sami Al-Arian with being a leader of the radical Palestinian group Islamic Jihad. A jury acquitted Al-Arian on many charges and deadlocked on others. Al-Arian later admitted to conspiring to help the group and was sentenced to nearly five years in prison. In 2007, USF students Ahmed Mohamed and Youssef Megahed were arrested in South Carolina after authorities found explosives in the trunk of their car. Mohamed pleaded guilty to helping terrorists by posting a video on YouTube in which he demonstrated how to detonate a bomb. He is serving 15 years in federal prison. A federal jury acquitted Megahed. Earlier, on the heels of Sept. 11, Charles Bishop of Palm Harbor killed himself by slamming a stolen Cessna into a Tampa skyscraper. The teenager left a note expressing sympathy for Osama bin Laden and Palestinians, but no terrorism link was established. The boy's family blamed the drug Accutane but dropped a lawsuit against its maker.

8. DOWNTOWN: NEW SIGNS OF LIFE

More people lived and worked downtown as the Centro Ybor entertainment complex and an assortment of new condo towers opened, the Tampa Bay History Center debuted, streetcars returned and the mayor's Riverwalk project grew. Trump Tower Tampa never got off the ground, but a new Tampa Museum of Art (pictured) and Glazer Children's Museum were approaching their debuts along the Hillsborough River at decade's end.

9. DUBIOUS BEHAVIOR

Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson left a budget deficit in the millions and a legacy of uneven leadership after being defeated in a re-election bid. The Lowry Park Zoo's board of directors forced Lex Salisbury out of his job after investigations revealed he mixed the zoo's assets and animals with those of a wild animal park in Polk County. State appeals court Judge Thomas E. Stringer resigned, and later pleaded guilty to bank fraud, after helping a stripper hide her financial assets from creditors. And Ralph Mervine resigned as executive director of the Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority in 2006 after it was learned he owned a pornography production company in San Diego.

10. ELECTION RECOUNT

George W. Bush was named the winner of the 2000 presidential election after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against further recounts in Florida. Bush and Al Gore's 37-day legal battle over the Florida vote introduced the world to butterfly ballots, hanging chad and Secretary of State Katherine Harris. This was more a Florida story than a Bay area one, but voters in Hillsborough and other counties spent the next few years learning to use assorted touch-screen voting machine systems.

11. FIRES AND SINKHOLES

An inferno destroyed a post office and a $32.8 million Ybor City apartment complex and scorched five city blocks in 2000, and an area north of the historic district was struck by 19 suspicious fires in 2009. In 2004, a portion of the elevated Lee Roy Selmon Expressway collapsed after a sinkhole swallowed a pylon, delaying construction.

12. DROUGHT

Brown lawns and dirty cars became common as one of the driest periods on record led to low river and reservoir levels and ongoing watering restrictions.

13. INDOOR SMOKING BAN

Florida voters approved a ban on smoking in restaurants and indoor workplaces in 2002, enhancing the state's health while contributing to the demise of companies such as the venerable Hav-A-Tampa cigar factory.

14. LAW ENFORCEMENT DEATHS

In 2001, Tampa Police Department Officer Lois Marrero became the first Tampa policewoman killed in action. Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office Sgt. Ron Hamlin Harrison was shot in his patrol car in Brandon in 2007, and Tampa police Cpl. Mike Roberts was shot dead in Sulphur Springs in 2009. Other Bay area law enforcement deaths included Charles A. "Bo" Harrison of the Pasco County Sheriff's Office and Douglas Speirs, Vernon Matthew Williams and Ronnie Brown, all of the Polk County Sheriff's Office.

15. FALLEN SOLDIERS

America's two wars hit home as 254 Floridians, including 57 from the Bay area, died in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many more were wounded.

16. THE RISE OF CHARLIE CRIST

The longtime St. Petersburg resident was elected governor in 2006, and his 2008 marriage to Carole Rome was the biggest Bay area wedding in years. Crist is running for the U.S. Senate.

17. INTERSTATE 4 PILEUP

Smoke and fog blinded drivers and caused 70 vehicles to slam together on a stretch of Interstate 4 in Polk County in 2008, killing five people and injuring 38.

18. TEACHER TROUBLE

Debra Lafave (pictured) and Stephanie Ragusa were among at least 18 Bay area educators charged with having improper relationships with minors.

19. WITHOUT WALLS

Tampa megachurch Without Walls International Church lost some of its mojo after Paula White stepped down as pastor in 2007; she and her husband, Randy, announced they were divorcing; and the ministry faced threats of foreclosure and a U.S. Senate inquiry into its tax-exempt status. Paula White returned as senior pastor in 2009.

20. COE SUICIDE

Mired in debt and facing an inquiry into his finances, Hillsborough State Attorney Harry Lee Coe III killed himself with a handgun below the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway in South Tampa in 2000.

21. BULLYING AND HARASSMENT

A case involving charges that classmates sexually assaulted a Walker Middle School flag football player and the sexting-related suicide of Hope Witsell, a 13-year-old Riverview girl, raised concerns and awareness about bullying and harassment among teenagers.

22. CHANGING SCHOOLS

Bay area schools faced huge challenges as they implemented a statewide school grade system, the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test and class-size restrictions. At decade's end, Hillsborough County schools received a $100 million teacher training and evaluation grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

23. VIDEOTAPED BEATING

Five teenage girls found their 15 minutes of notoriety after their videotaped beating of a Polk County cheerleader, intended for posting on the Internet, was released to the media.

24. OPEN ROADS

Motorists breathed a collective sigh of relief as seemingly never-ending efforts to widen or improve Interstate 4 between Tampa and Orlando, Interstate 275 from Himes Avenue to downtown Tampa and State Road 60 and the Veterans Expressway near Tampa International Airport were finished or neared completion.

25. THE HOUSE THAT JETER BUILT

New York Yankee superstar Derek Jeter's 30,875-square-foot waterfront mansion, expected to become the largest single-family residence in the county, rose on Davis Islands.