Florida mother of 4 and banker's wife abandons family to join Wall Street protesters
By KEVIN FASICK and BOB FREDERICKS
Photo Dan Brinzac
A married mother of four from Florida ditched her family to become part of the raggedy mob in Zuccotti Park -- keeping the park clean by day and keeping herself warm at night with the help of a young waiter from Brooklyn.
“I’m not planning on going home,” an unapologetic Stacey Hessler, 38, told The Post yesterday.
“I have no idea what the future holds, but I’m here indefinitely. Forever,” said Hessler, whose home in DeLand sits 911 miles from the tarp she’s been sleeping under.
Hessler -- who ironically is married to a banker -- arrived 12 days ago and planned to stay for a week, but changed her plans after cozying up to some like-minded radicals, including Rami Shamir, 30, a waiter at a French bistro in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
She swears she’s not romantically involved with her new friend.
Yesterday was a typical day for the pair, who woke up at 8 a.m. on their little patch of paving stone near the communal kitchen and dashed off to Trinity Church to wash up.
Hessler emerged an hour later, her brown hair in dreadlocks, wearing a T-shirt depicting Han Solo and Princess Leia kissing, and bearing the slogan “Make Love Not War.”
She got coffee and a granola bar from the protest kitchen before sorting laundry for two hours.
The unemployed Long Island native compared her decision to abandon her family to Americans serving in the armed forces.
“Military people leave their families all the time, so why should I feel bad?” a defiant Hessler said. “I’m fighting for a better world.”
She said she had been following the movement on Facebook, and the more she learned, the more obsessed she became with joining the demonstrators.
At around 11 a.m. yesterday, Hessler moved from laundry duty to park cleanup -- a four-hour detail from which she broke just once to give a troubled protester a hug at the “empathy table.” She also found time for a meditation session later in the day.
Hessler has spoken with her family -- husband Curtiss, 42; son Peyton, 17; and daughters Kennedy 15, Sullivan, 13, and Veda, 7 -- just three times since leaving them. “Friends are taking care of them,” she said.
Not everyone has supported her decision. “My mother told me I was being very selfish,” she admitted.
And her husband, a former Bank of America financial adviser who now works at a local Florida bank, is perplexed. “He says he’s working for ‘the Man,’ and I’m fighting against him,” she said.
After finishing her morning routine and afternoon chores yesterday, Hessler spent the evening attending organizer meetings and helping fellow protesters find sleeping spots.
Hessler herself bedded down on an air mattress at 12:28 a.m., ready to do it all over again today.
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Scenes From Zuccotti Park: 'She Believes Everything Should Be Free'
The New York Post caught up with that dopey mother of the year we noted Friday. She's even stranger than first reported.
Meanwhile, it's reported that a whopping 37% of the public supports these lunatics. That's odd considering they represent 99%, right? Maybe they should start chanting "We are the 37%" for historical accuracy.
Back in Manhattan, some idiot has scaled a 40-foot-high steel art exhibit and vows to not come down until Mayor Bloomberg resigns. Have a nice time up there, pal.
The Florida mom who ditched her banker husband and four kids to live in Zuccotti Park squalor is a hippie homemaker whose neighbors are horrified by her latest antics -- but are hardly surprised that she flew the coop.Isn't that special. She called her daughter on her birthday. I wonder if she thinks the call was free? No word whether her flight back to Florida will also be free, or the divorce attorney.
Stacey Hessler, 38 -- a self-described “vegan freak” who’s into dreadlocks, roller derby and “unschooling” her kids -- acts like a self-obsessed college sophomore who never grew up, said a neighbor in her hometown of DeLand, Fla.
“I’m not disgusted she took off [to protest] -- because I’m not surprised,” seethed one next-door neighbor who asked that her name not be published.
“‘The Man’ she went up there to fight against is the bank where her husband works.
“She believes everything should be free,” the neighbor added.
The middle-aged flower child’s trip to New York to sleep under the stars with the Occupy Wall Street protesters was chronicled in The Post yesterday.
One angry neighbor said yesterday it was hardly surprising that Hessler would leave her kids behind and go radical.
“She’s very bizarre,” the neighbor insisted.
On her Facebook page, Hessler wrote about being a surrogate mom. She also boasted of a panoply of California-style beliefs.
She called herself a “radical unschooling mom of four, midwives assistant, roller-derby queen, rock-star musician, activist, dreadlock princess, African-bee keeper, organic vegan freak and a surrogate for the second time.”
Hessler has gotten even more hippie since she arrived in New York. In Zuccotti Park, she’s been sharing a tarp with a Brooklyn waiter and plans to stay “indefinitely.”
The waiter, Rami Shamir, vehemently declined to comment at his job last night.
While she doesn’t get much love from her neighbor, pals of Hessler clearly support her Occupy Wall Street outing.
One friend in New York called Hessler and her family “one of the most amazing and beautiful and loving families that I’ve ever encountered.”
The friend also explained how Hessler came to be part of the protest.
“She had been following this movement on her own through Facebook and YouTube and whatever, and she decided she wanted to come up to New York. And her family said, ‘Go, mom, go. This is what you want to do,’ ” said Lauren Napoli, 28, a waitress and home health aide.
“This is what she believes in, and she feels she needs to be here,” Napoli said. “She’s not being irresponsible.”
Napoli said Hessler and her tarp mate are not “bunking up in a little tent.”
“It’s not like that -- everyone who’s there, we’re trying to support each other, and when it rains you need to be under a structure.”
“I’ve been right next to her when she’s been on the phone with her kids,” she added. “It was [her youngest daughter’s] birthdahttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gify recently and she called and said ‘happy birthday.’ ”
Meanwhile, it's reported that a whopping 37% of the public supports these lunatics. That's odd considering they represent 99%, right? Maybe they should start chanting "We are the 37%" for historical accuracy.
Back in Manhattan, some idiot has scaled a 40-foot-high steel art exhibit and vows to not come down until Mayor Bloomberg resigns. Have a nice time up there, pal.
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