Former Coast resident proposes tourism promotion

By MARY PEREZ - meperez@sunherald.com

BILOXI — Sammie Woodcock Mays was on the Coast for the past week uniting the Mississippi Gulf Coast and the Florida Keys as the Gulf oil spill threatens both.

She was raised in Pass Christian and now holds the title of ‘honorary mayor of Key West and the Florida Keys.’ “Key West and the Florida Keys are my adopted family,

but the Mississippi Gulf Coast is my blood family,” she said.

‘Honorary mayor of Key West and the Florida Keys’ and former South Mississippi resident Sammie Mays is back on the Coast for a few days working to form a partnership between the two areas.

Her need to visit home came when she saw a fishing charter boat, “Strictly Business, Biloxi, MS,” anchored in the Keys. She went looking for the boat owner and found Captain Mike Moore.

On Friday she was out on the water with Mike and Brandy Moore and their Biloxi Shrimping Trip charter. The rest of the week she’d spent giving people a little relief from the oil with a smile and a story.

She has plenty to tell. There’s the one of how she found Keith Thibodeaux, who played Little Ricky on “I Love Lucy,” appearing with a band at a church in Escatawpa. That tale made it to the National Inquirer.

She asked an Inquirer editor for the hardest job with the biggest payoff and earned $100,000 for being the one to get a photo of Pete Rose in a supermax prison in Illinois. She and a Nashville songwriter hid cameras in their sound speakers. She played a concert for the inmates, got Rose to agree to the photo while he was watching a Cincinnati Reds game on TV, and got out of the prison with the film.

The photograph was named Sports Illustrated Best of the Year and is still influencing her life. She has just been named the media expert for MPM Group, a team of prison security consultants.

Mays also writes for an entertainment magazine and appears on a local television channel in the Florida Keys promoting the area.

She headed back to Key West on Saturday, determined to help South Florida and South Mississippi through the oil crisis by promoting tourism in both areas. She’d like to see the cruise ships that now stop in the Caribbean come to the Keys instead, and she’s sure people who have homes in the Keys will want to visit Biloxi.

Mays said she will tell them, “These are the most charming people in all the world.

Go to the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Go feel at home.”

                                          

---

                 

Friends of the Marathon Book and Coffee Series

   

 

Gonzo Girl Sammie Mays, Keynoter columnist and party girl extraordinaire, will make us envy her free spirit and adventurous life and roll with laughter as she tells stories from her career as a reporter for many publications including THE NATIONAL ENQUIRER.

  

                                                      

 

---

For Immediate Release
February 7, 2008

Florida Keys “Gonzo Girl” Rushed to Emergency Room

Gonzo Writer Sammie Mays was rushed to the Mariners Hospital Emergency Center late Wednesday night for undisclosed reasons.

“The Gonz,” famous for her near-criminal stunt of infiltrating a Super-Max Penitentiary and photographing (for the National Enquirer tabloid) baseball bad-boy Pete Rose in prison, Sammie had just finished an hour-long radio show interview at WORZ 104.3 FM in Ocean Reef where she discussed her latest coup – “Jimmy Hoffa: The Florida Keys Connection.” “The Gonz” was moved into a private room on Thursday, Feb. 7 and unable to speak with us.


Jill Miranda Baker
Manager, Medical Staff Services
91500 Overseas Highway
Tavernier, FL 33070
305-434-1584 phone
305-434-1660 fax
www.baptisthealth.net
 

---