A Eurocopter EC135 crashed Sunday afternoon in Cave Creek, north of Phoenix. Appears to be N127TS, registered to Services Group of America, Scottsdale, AZ. Reports are three fatalities. Very sad.
They have a G-IV and Lear 35 N128TS + N129TS. Used to be based in Seattle. Also known as Food Services of America, Amerifresh and a bunch of other companies. Tom Stewart is the owner.
They were chased out of Washington by the high taxes and for giving too much to Republican candidates. Kind of like Boeing. http://www.citizenreviewonline.org/april2006/08/deathtax.html
Background on his helicopter case in Seattle http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-64087930.html
wazzu 90…ur an idiot…FSA and Tom Stuart didnt get “chased” out of washington…he left because of washington states high BS estate tax and its ability to destroy the company in the event of his passing…he was thinking of saving its 4000 employees and keeping the company whole…tom stuart does ‘run’ from anything.
get ur facts right jack before making stupid uninformed comments.
Do you check your spelling and facts? Tom Stuar does run from anything - or is that suppose to be “doesn’t run”? Washington, being a proper noun, is spelled with a capital “W”. “ur” can be a city in ancient Sumer, in which case it’s spelled with a capital “U”, or it can be the University of Richmond, in which case both letters are capitalized. The end of a sentence contains one period unless you are using an ellipsis in which case there are four periods.
You say Stuart wasn’t chased out of Washington yet you go on to say he left Washington. You’re basically saying the same thing. He left Washington because of high taxes. Another way of saying this is that the “we never met a tax we didn’t like” Democrats in charge of the state chased out the business operated by Stuart due to high taxes.
I stand by my statements. As for the personal attacks, grammar, spelling and poor vocabulary… no comment. 
I’ve always found wazz to be a bit psychologically unstable, but an “idiot”?..not even close. 
But you jr, to display such disrespect while essentially restating the same message…and for your first post no less…now that’s pretty moronic.
yes! outside of the grammar punctuation lesson to which i dont abide by when typing informal emails (nor does bill gates) …yes! you are correct, tom stewart DOESNT run from anyone.
facts are correct. with washington state enacting such absurd estate taxes, it is yet another example of washington state’s Dumbocrats loosing jobs. tom stewart is a savvy business man, and unlike most people who do not have any estate planning (such as a living trust) stewart is smart enough to be forward thinking to insure that his 4000 employees, and his company, continue to prosper should, god forbid, anything happen to him.
thanks for the clarification.
Gee, thanks buddy! http://www.websmileys.com/sm/crazy/1087.gif
Tom Stewart (I worked for him for 8 years) never ran from anything. He knew what he wanted and he was focused about getting it. He left from Washington because of our liberal tax policies and the political corruption which is present.
Stewart was pulled into a grand jury investigation due to a claim that he was funneling money through his employees to Republican candidates. In actually, Tom did not do anything but hire like minded employees (conservatives), pay them well and provide them opportunities to support the candidates of their choice. The liberal folks in Washington (Federal and State) were upset that Tom was one of the largest contributor to Republicans so they did everything they could to destroy Tom.
Tom was a patriot! He will be missed!
WOW! Apparently some folks in WA have comprehension difficulties when reading.
There’s a vast difference between stating “he ran away” and “he was chased out”. I’ll leave it to you folks to attempt to discern the difference.
@jr080, if your last post was an attempt at an apology, it missed the target by a wide margin.
Local News updates from ABC 15.
Wow, what a little bit of sunshine we have going on here. So glad I started this thread.
How about a little respect for the three folks that died, one of them a child.
Glad to see the newbies come out in force to act like asses, though.
+1
Came across this on the Seattle Times website.
$5 Million Fine – Republican Fund-Raiser Pleads Guilty To Illegal Campaign Donations
Elements of the Thomas Stewart plea agreement:
A campaign-finance investigation, long shrouded in secrecy, reached a swift and public conclusion today when a federal judge accepted Seattle businessman Thomas Stewart’s guilty plea for making illegal campaign donations throughout most of this decade.
– A combined $5 million in fines, of which $570,000 will be paid to the state for civil election-law infractions. Thomas Stewart, chairman of Services Group of America and its subsidiary, Food Services of America, will pay $100,000, as will SGA executive Dennis Specht. The remaining $4.8 million will be paid by Food Services of America.
– Food Services of America pleads guilty to 24 misdemeanor counts of violating federal election laws. Stewart and Specht plead guilty to one misdemeanor count each.
– Stewart and Specht will serve two months of house arrest, in which they will be permitted to go to work and to church but must report home by 8 p.m. Both will wear electronic-monitoring ankle bracelets, and Stewart will not be permitted to use the company helicopter based on his Vashon Island estate. In addition, both Stewart and Specht will perform 160 hours of community service at soup kitchens and homeless shelters.
– Food Services of America agrees to adopt a political fund-raising “compliance program” to ensure that any future donations are given legally.
– The federal government agrees not to pursue further charges against Stewart, Specht or Food Services of America.
Stewart is widely regarded as one of Washington state’s most powerful private citizens. SGA, a global holding company whose subsidiaries include Food Services of America and several insurance and real-estate spinoffs, is repeatedly ranked in the upper tiers of Forbes Magazine’s “500 Largest Private Companies” list. It has 2,300 employees and annual revenues estimated at more than $1 billion.
Stewart’s company has donated more than $1.2 million to GOP candidates and issues this decade, and he also helps fund the Washington Institute for Policy Studies, a conservative think-tank based in a suite at SGA’s West Seattle complex.
“It’s outrageous to me that even after the magnitude of these offenses, the Republican Party would still say they would want to take this man’s money,” Berendt said this morning.
“(Stewart’s) been their biggest sugar daddy and they can’t wean themselves from his money.”
Plans, nonetheless, are under way for the August picnic held at Stewart’s estate on Vashon Island. It’s an annual event in which hundreds of Republican supporters and politicians gather on Stewart’s homestead to munch on hamburgers and energize the rank and file for
fall elections.
In one of the most prominent cases in the nation involving campaign-finance violations, Stewart, one of his companies and his chief financial officer, Dennis Specht, agreed to pay $5 million in fines for illegally funneling money to various election campaigns. The $5 million fine is the third-largest financial penalty imposed on a donor anywhere in the country.
Indeed, there is little indication Stewart and his corporate executives plan to rein in their political involvement.
Seattle Times - Wednesday, March 18 1998
I am surprised you actually consider the Seattle Times a credible news source. The court documents were sealed and not released. The specifics were not released.
A quote from the Bible suggests to not point to the splinter in your neighbors eye when you have a log in yours.
Blessings on the family’s who lost members in this terrible crash.
Confirmed Stewart, his wife and five year old child, perhaps others aboard.
Helicopter crash killed at least five people
by Angelique Soenarie, Michael Kiefer and Megan Boehnke - Feb. 15, 2010 04:27 PM
The Arizona Republic
At least five people died in a fiery helicopter crash in Cave Creek on Sunday.
The chief executive of a Scottsdale-based company died, along with his wife and a young daughter, according to a spokesman for the company, Service Group of America.
The crash victims were identified as Thomas Stewart, 64, of Paradise Valley, his wife Madina, and their young daughter, Sydney. The other victims were not identified.
The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office is not releasing further details pending further information from the Maricopa County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The National Transportation Safety Board will hold a news conference at 5 p.m. at the scene of the crash.
Brad Parker, a spokesman for Service Group of America said the corporate helicopter was en route from Flagstaff to Scottsdale Air Park when it crashed in a desert wash in a residential area in Cave Creek. The cause of the crash is still unknown.
A Cave Creek resident who heard the 3 p.m. crash, rushed from his house and said he saw the copter in flames. Two bodies had been thrown from the aircraft.
Stewart moved his company from Seattle in 2006 after an inheritance tax passed in the Washington legislature, according to The Seattle Times.
Service Group of America, a $2.7 billion company that specializes in food services and real estate, employs more than 3,000 employees. Stewart founded the company 37 years ago.
From AIN:
Blade Separation Preceded EC135 Crash
Preliminary indications are that blade failure played a role in the fatal crash of a 2000 American Eurocopter EC135T1 near Cave Creek, Ariz., on Sunday afternoon. Witnesses on the ground reported hearing a popping sound and then seeing parts fly off the helicopter before it rolled several times, pitched 90 degrees nose-down into the ground and caught fire. The NTSB confirmed to AIN that parts of the rotor blades were found half a mile from the crash site. The helicopter was en route from Flagstaff to Scottsdale Air Park when it crashed in a desert wash between two houses, killing all five aboard. Among the passengers were the helicopter’s owner-billionaire Thomas Stewart, CEO of Services Group of America - his wife, five-year-old daughter and the pilot. Stewart is remembered for unsuccessfully trying to get the city of Seattle to approve a helipad on the roof of his office building there, and eventually taking the matter to the Washington State Supreme Court.