Pizza shop owner picks up Obama in bear hug
Sep 11, 2012, 12:33 AM | Updated: 12:34 am
We’ve heard of a friendly greeting, but one Florida pizza shop owner may have gone a bit too far.
Scott Van Duzer, who owns Big Apple Pizza and Pasta Restaurant in Fort Pierce, Florida, decided that a handshake and a hug wouldn’t suffice when he met President Barack Obama. Instead, Van Duzer, who clearly spends more than five minutes at the gym, decided to give Obama a bear hug and lifted the president about a foot off the floor.
Asked if he was concerned about a Secret Service reaction to the hug, Van Duzer said he was informed that “I was all right as long as I didn’t take him away.”
Van Duzer said he was only given about 40 minutes notice that the president would be stopping in to thank him for his efforts to get people to donate blood.