PARENTS BLAME POLICE IN DEATH

TALLAHASSEE - Irv Hoffman and Margie Weiss spent Mother's Day planning
their only child's funeral.

"We had to go to her apartment and turn off the utilities and go
through her things. This was a kid who was going to go far in life,"
Weiss, of Safety Harbor, said Sunday during a drive back from
Tallahassee.

Police say 23-year-old Rachel Hoffman's body was found early Friday in
rural Taylor County, southeast of Tallahassee, after a two-day search.
Two suspects are in custody.

The Pinellas County woman, a graduate of Countryside High School in
Clearwater, was cooperating with the narcotics squad in an
investigation when she disappeared Wednesday.

Her father said it didn't make any sense involving his daughter in a
drug and weapons investigation.

"To throw her to the lions, it's just too unbearable to think about,"
said Hoffman, 58, of Palm Harbor.

At a news conference Sunday, lawyers representing the woman's family
said Hoffman should not have been placed in such a dangerous situation.

Attorney Johnny Devine criticized Tallahassee police, saying
authorities blamed Hoffman, a recent graduate of Florida State
University, for her own murder.

Hoffman, who was facing several felony charges, had agreed to
cooperate with narcotics officers and was posing as a buyer.

Police have said Hoffman didn't follow protocol when she left with
Andrea J. Green and Deneilo Bradshaw, who are now suspects in her
disappearance and death.

Green and Bradshaw both face kidnapping and armed robbery charges.
Jail records show they have not made court appearances or been granted
bail.

Authorities should have done a better job protecting Hoffman, Devine
said.

Her parents remembered a vivacious young woman who loved life and "was
a shining light whenever she walked into a room," Weiss, 57, said.

"She was the most loving, beautiful girl you could meet," her father
said.

"She wanted to go to culinary school. She wanted to open a restaurant
with a friend. She loved nature, music and art," he said. "I feel like
the wind has been kicked out of me."

Although Hoffman majored in psychology at FSU, her passion was
cooking. She wanted to attend a culinary school in Arizona.

"She always had room in her heart and a place at a table," said Susan
Mike, a family friend.

Weiss said she wants to push for a law in which confidential
informants are required to seek legal advice before consenting to
undercover work. She also wants marijuana convictions
decriminalized.

She said her daughter called two weeks ago to tell her she wanted to
work undercover with the Tallahassee police to expunge her arrest
record, which included a marijuana charge. Weiss advised against it.

"It was totally wrong. She trusted them. She put her trust in them,"
she said.

Officers established a safe zone in the area where Hoffman was
supposed to purchase ecstasy, cocaine and a gun, Tallahassee police
spokesman David McCranie said. An investigator told her not to go to
another location.

Devine, who represented Hoffman on previous drug charges, said neither
he nor the state attorney's office knew about the arrangement.

Department policy did not call for the state attorney's office to be
notified, and it was Hoffman's responsibility to inform her attorney
of the situation, McCranie said.

The funeral service for Hoffman will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday at Temple
Ahavat Shalom, 1575 Curlew Road, Palm Harbor.

"She was an innocent, and they try to slander her," Weiss said. "It's
Mother's Day, and they're trying to make my daughter sound like a criminal."