That's a welcome change for Capt. Joseph Hazelwood, 52, who has been Alaska's most prominent persona non grata since 1989, when he ran the Exxon Valdez aground and accidentally dumped 11 million gallons of crude into Prince William Sound in the nation's worst environmental disaster. In 1990 he was acquitted of operating the tanker while drunk, but was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of negligent discharge of oil, fined $50,000 and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service—a sentence delayed for nine years by legal appeals.
After spending his first day picking up trash on local roads, Hazelwood was transferred to the soup kitchen to protect him from still angry locals. "I felt terrible about my involvement...as any normal human being would," Hazelwood told The New York Times. The supervisor of the local work service program expects no complaints about Hazelwood, who has lived on New York's Long Island with his wife while working for the law firm handling his case. "He's a ship's captain," says Fred Fulgencio. "He knows how to work."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
