As Boca magazine celebrates its 45th years in business, we dedicated the January 2025 issue to looking back at the early days of the publication—when John and Margaret Mary Shuff decided to take a chance and open a magazine in a little place called Boca Raton.
Here are some highlights of the stories we’ve covered over the years, from fascinating people and places to hard-hitting issues that impacted our community. And this is just the tip of the iceberg:
- The Florida Marlins, “our new baseball team” (May/June 1993)
- The inaugural “Best of Boca” feature, which we continue to produce (May/June 1994)
- Brach Heiress murder (March/April 1995)
- “What is Generation X? What’s with the tattoos, the pierced noses, the attitude? Here’s our thumbnail guide to the 20-somethings no one understands” (May/June 1995)
- “Sexiest Bald Men in Boca” (September/October 1995)
- The first “My Turn,” a column of musings written by publisher John Shuff until his death in 2020 (January/February 1996)
- “At Home With Lilly Pulitzer” (March/April 1996)
- A sit-down interview with Jimmy Buffett (January/February 1997)
- “Class of ’66: The First Class of Boca High Remembers the Way They Were and Where They are Today” (September/October 1997)
- 100th issue of Boca magazine (March/April 1998)
- First “Speed Bumps” column by Marie Speed, which ran for many years and then was revived in 2024 (January/February 2001)
- A deep-dive into the sentencing of serial killer David Miller; he was released from prison in November 2024 (January/February 2001)
- “Human Cargo: The Smuggle of Haitians into South Florida is a Desperate Border War No One Wins” (May/June 2001)
- A feature on autism and its impact on families (November 2008)
- Investigating Palm Beach County gangs (February 2009)
- Oldest unsolved mystery in Boca Raton, the murder of Lorenzo and Louise Lazzari (March/April 2009)
- A case that still haunts Boca Raton today, a look at the kidnapping and murders of Nancy & Joey Bochicchio (November 2010)
- Sex trafficking and how the internet has bolstered the crime (November 2011)
- An interview with Mika Brzezinski (February 2012)
- “Case Closed with John Walsh” (March/April 2012)
- Almost a decade after his execution, we looked into the murder spree by Danny Rolling at the University of Florida (July/August 2015)
- An interview with Phil Collins (November 2016)
- A celebration of the Boca Raton Regional Hospital turning 50 (January 2017)
- Does solar power work in Florida? We investigated. (Summer 2018)
- “The Gunshine State” explored run rights and Florida’s gun lobby after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (September/October 2018)
This Web Extra is from the January 2025 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
