by Allen G. Breed
Associated Press Writer
10/10/01
BOCA RATON, Fla. (AP) -- When Jordan Arizmendi finished his internship at the National Enquirer in August, he thought he'd leave a "cute, funny" e-mail behind to say good-bye and thanks. "I will be remembered by all the little tricks and treats that I hid around the office," he wrote.
Not everyone thought the note cute. And for one agonizing day, the soft-spoken college senior was the object of fears and media reports that one of those "treats" might have been anthrax.
The FBI met with the Fort Lauderdale man for about an hour Monday on the Florida Atlantic University campus and quickly cleared him of any suspicion of bioterrorism. But Arizmendi fears the taint will stay with him.
"I think it will hurt me indeed," Arizmendi, 23, said Tuesday before going to be tested for anthrax. "I think my name will be connected with terrorists. You read in the papers, they write a two-page story of what the man's accused of, and then maybe a week later they'll write two sentences to exonerate him."
Arizmendi was one of a dozen FAU students who won $2,500 summer scholarships sponsored by American Media Inc., which publishes the Enquirer and five other tabloid newspapers.
Officials descended on the AMI headquarters in Boca Raton after a photo editor for The Sun died Friday of inhaled anthrax and a mailroom employee tested positive for it Sunday. Immediately, employees began looking for anything suspicious that happened in the past few weeks.
One senior reporter mentioned the e-mail from Arizmendi, noting that his dark skin and exotic name made him seem Middle Eastern. In reality, his father is of Spanish-Basque descent, and his mother is Jewish.
Arizmendi said he learned from a New York Daily News reporter Monday that the FBI wanted to question him. Agents plucked him from an interview with the Walt Disney Co. about a post-college internship.
Arizmendi said he borrowed the e-mail idea from his brother, who sent a similar note on his last day at a law firm and left little caches of sweets hidden around the office. On his last day, Arizmendi brought about $30 worth of bagels and cream cheese to the office as a token of his appreciation.
"It was cheesy and humorous," the stocky, bespectacled man said of the note. "That's what I was trying to do. ... Maybe that was a little too bold."
Arizmendi planned to resume his Disney meeting where it broke off, though he's concerned how all this controversy will effect his job prospects.
"It couldn't have happened at a worse time," he said. "In a couple of months, I'm going to be graduating and looking for work."
Besides being racially profiled incorrectly, Arizmendi is hurt that anyone at the newspaper would think him capable of anything like this.
"I don't really know what to think," he said. "I don't really hold any resentment. That's not my nature. The trick whenever a tragedy befalls someone is to try to turn it into a positive event.
"I hope I can do that."
------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Arizmendi’s highlighted comments are eerily reminiscent of another recent “joke” played out in Florida (although CAIR didn’t threaten lawsuit; perhaps he isn’t a Muslim, or was it too soon for them to go on the offensive?)
Life is full of coincidences, or is it?
The story doesn't mention it, but Arizmendi was also hospitalized for "pneumonia" soon after, at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale -- same hospital Atta supposedly took his cohort to, for treatment of leg lesion which was ID'd as possible skin anthrax in retrospect. Arizmendi lived in Fort Lauderdale, so Holy Cross is logical; Atta was living in Boca, and there's more than one hospital closer (and less congested) than Holy Cross -- residents of Boca don't normally travel that distance for an ER.
Of course, the "pneumonia" (or perhaps inhalation anthrax) can now be explained by contact with copying machines -- depending on what his duties as an intern were...but the only other person to come down with pneumonia/anthrax was the elderly mail room clerk, and since he quit in August, that would place the anthrax there earlier than September.
Oops, my bad! It was Amad Al Haznawi and Ziad Samir Jarrah that showed up at Holy Cross. They were renting a house in Lauderdale-By-The-Sea at that time, so Holy Cross makes sense. Atta, on the other hand, showed up at a Boca pharmacy with red hands, and his cohort had the "sniffles."