Eever Norman was once a high-flying event planner for the W Hotels who helped organize Fashion Week. But by 2014 he was just high, homeless, and running from the law. So he used his industry smarts and flair for style to go on the lam at some of NYC’s ritziest hotels, such as The Plaza, St. Regis, and The Waldorf. But eventually, he ended up in a suite on Rikers Island — which the 53-year-old credits for saving his life.
Born in Oregon, he was living his dream in Manhattan working as a contractor at Fashion Week for eight years from 2004 to 2012 as part of the hotel chain’s sponsorship. But an addiction to methamphetamines got him blacklisted from the event for selling front-row seats to shady characters for $500 a pop, he recalled.“They said, ‘If you’re going to bring people to Fashion Week and have them sit in the front row please have them look less like prostitutes,’” Norman recalled.
Over the next months he lost all his money, and his apartment in Midtown, and found himself running from the law after missing court dates on charges of embezzlement, credit card fraud, forgery, and grand larceny, documents show. He remembered searching for shelter on a bitter night in January 2014 — and picking the St. Regis Hotel in Midtown.“I still had an overnight bag with me and it was a nice one and I looked decent,” he recalled. “I walked right in.”
The party came to a crashing end when Norman was busted for stealing a Vogue magazine and a soup at the Columbus Circle Whole Foods on Labor Day Weekend and cops ran his ID “They said, ‘Oh, Mr. Norman, [the judge] has been looking for you,’” he recalled. “You have several warrants out for your arrest.”
The next thing he knew he was on a bus — in a pink cage for psychiatric cases — on his way to Rikers, where the intake was “pure insanity,” he said. At one point, they put a Latin Kings gangbanger in the cell with him and other inmates. The 6-foot-5 hulking member zeroed in on Norman, who is about 6 feet tall, blond, and weighs 180 pounds. (full story at link)