by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
The only things brighter than her orange-and-blue parka are Celeste Harrell’s smile and personality. She has been a Downtown Ambassador since the program started in October 2001 and is the last remaining Ambassador from the inaugural group.
Harrell had a job driving a shuttle bus at the airport when one of her passengers told her about a new program being created by Downtown Vision Inc.
“I’m a people person,” she said. “I was taking a gentleman to his car and I was kidding with him — just being myself — and he told me about this new company coming into downtown and he thought I’d be perfect for the job. He gave me some information and said if I was interested to give him a call. I read it over and the word that got my attention was ‘revitalizing’ downtown Jacksonville.
“To me, ‘revitalize’ means bring to life, to make a change. I wanted to be part of a group of people that wanted to make a positive change for downtown. That was the main thing that made me decide I wanted to give this a shot.”
Harrell will never forget the day she became one of the first Downtown Ambassadors.
“We had a ceremony in Hemming Plaza and we were given our helmets,” she said.
Harrell estimates she has walked over 10,000 miles since that day when she received her pith helmet, a trademark of the Downtown Ambassadors. She said she averages about eight miles a day on a normal day, and even more during the Florida-Georgia game, the Gator Bowl and events like Super Bowl, when a lot of people who are downtown don’t know their way around.
“We go the extra mile,” she said. “Instead of just giving them directions, we take them where they need to go and that makes a difference.”
The first thing Downtown Ambassadors do in the morning is make sure downtown is ready, because company is coming.
“In the morning, we do what’s called RFB — Ready for Business — from 7:15 to about 9 a.m. It’s a preparation. We look around and pick up trash. It’s like when you invite someone into your home. We want it to look good. When you invite people to your home, you clean up the living room and the kitchen even if you don’t do anything else,” she said.
Four years ago, one of the main things the Downtown Ambassadors did was work to eliminate panhandling. Back then, you didn’t have to be downtown very long before someone would ask for spare change and some of the panhandlers were aggressive.
“I can say without any hesitation that we have been instrumental in eliminating 80 percent of the panhandlers in downtown,” said Harrell. “We had a task in the beginning. Now you rarely see them.
“We were trained to interrupt the process. We’d stand in front of the person being panhandled and strike up a conversation. Also, we would educate people to let them know that panhandling is against the law. It has caught on,” she said.
Harrell said she and her fellow Ambassadors are trained by the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office to do things like get accurate descriptions of people and how to safely follow a suspicious individual from a distance. It’s all part of making downtown safe.
“They are actually extra eyes and ears for our department,” said officer Dan Brannon, who helped train the first class of Ambassadors.
When you see Harrell walking around downtown in her pith helmet, chances are she’ll be waving to people and greeting them by name. She’s always ready to give directions, answer questions and make everyone she meets feel welcome and happy about being downtown.
“The idea is to plant a seed. Every time you come downtown, we want it to be a positive experience,” she said. “We want you to remember the positive feeling you got from a Downtown Ambassador.”