TALLAHASSEE, FL — For the seventh consecutive quarter, local mortgage broker and four-year blue belt Miguel “Migs” Tesoro, 36, posted a grainy Thursday-evening group photo from Clearwater Ridge BJJ this week captioned with the same eleven-word affirmation he has typed verbatim since the summer of 2024: “I love our gym, we don’t have drama like other places.”
The post went up Thursday at 9:14 PM. Within six hours, it had been liked by 41 of Clearwater Ridge’s 112 current members, three of whom, as of Friday morning, were actively refusing to occupy the same half of the mat as one another.
Tesoro’s affirmation, now in its third year of unblemished reuse, coincided with what records obtained from the Leon County civil clerk describe as “an active complaint for unpaid wages and unspecified damages” filed April 14 by former assistant instructors Camden Reese, 31, and Joaquin “Joaq” Ortiz, 34, both purple belts who left the academy within eleven days of one another in February. The complaint, case number 2026-CA-00812, alleges a combined $47,600 in unpaid compensation across sixteen months, names head instructor Professor Dale Vickery in his individual capacity, and includes as Exhibit B a group-chat screenshot in which Vickery replies to a payroll question with the single word “bro.”
Clearwater Ridge’s Tuesday 6:30 PM gi class, meanwhile, was taught for the seventeenth consecutive session by a rotating roster of purple belts working from what one of them described to a member as “the general vibe of what Brett used to do.” Brett Vickery, 39, the head coach’s younger brother and the academy’s former Tuesday-night gi instructor, has not appeared on the schedule since April 4. His photo, bio, and the note ‘trained in Rio’ quietly disappeared from the academy’s “Our Team” page between the 9:41 AM and 10:02 AM cache captures on April 5.
On Tuesday, between the 7:30 PM gi class and the 9:00 PM no-gi session, an argument that began on the mat concerning an alleged “late tap” during open rolling migrated at 8:47 PM into the gravel overflow parking area shared with the adjacent Apex Gains Nutrition & Pre-Workout. A metal folding chair, previously used for bagwork spectators and stored on the curb, was picked up, swung in the direction of a parked Hyundai Sonata, missed, and dented itself against the concrete curb with such force that Apex Gains owner Rhonda Pellegrino, 52, reviewing her storefront camera the following morning, initially classified the footage as “possible vandalism” before recognizing two of her own regular customers mid-shout.
None of this appears in Tesoro’s post.
Tesoro is, however, a member of the academy’s private member group chat, which, according to a screenshot shared Sunday evening by a member who asked not to be named because “everyone already knows who I am,” accumulated 612 unread messages between Saturday at 11:12 AM and Sunday at 11:12 AM. Clearwater Ridge’s usual weekly average is approximately 40. Topics covered in the Sunday block include, in order: the parking-lot incident, the missing instructor, the lawsuit, the chair, a separate dispute over whether an ounce-and-a-half gi patch constitutes “representing another academy,” and, for 83 consecutive messages beginning at 2:14 AM, the question of whether Professor Vickery had seen any of the preceding messages yet.
Cass Rothman, a 45-year-old HR director who has trained at Clearwater Ridge since 2018 and whose name appears 142 times in the Sunday group-chat block, confirmed Monday evening that the academy is “going through a rough patch but nothing out of the ordinary.” Pressed on whether the rough patch included the lawsuit, the instructor, the chair, or the group chat about the chair, Rothman replied, “All four, but separately.”
Tesoro has muted the group chat. He has read every message.
The top reply on his Thursday post, posted forty-eight minutes after the original, reads “This is why we’re built different.” The account, @migs_the_bigs_backup, has no followers, follows only @migs_the_bigs, and was created on March 2, 2026, the same week a cross-platform announcement about Reese and Ortiz’s departure was requested by four members and declined by the academy as “unnecessarily divisive.”
Asked for comment Friday afternoon in the academy parking lot, Tesoro, visibly lifting a gi bag into his Tacoma from behind a different Hyundai than the one previously cited, told reporters he “doesn’t really get into the politics,” that he “just comes to train,” and that “every gym has its stuff, but ours is honestly pretty chill.” Pressed on which Tuesday he was last present for, Tesoro, after a pause of approximately six seconds, replied “recently,” then clarified “recent-ish,” then specified “within the month,” then, after checking his phone, said “March 26th.”
The Thursday photo on Tesoro’s post depicts Tesoro, Professor Vickery, Brett Vickery, Camden Reese, Joaquin Ortiz, and twelve other members standing shoulder-to-shoulder on the mat in matching academy shirts, smiling. It was taken on January 18, 2026.
In a comment posted Friday at 10:11 PM, Tesoro added a single line: “Blessed to be part of something real.”
By Sunday evening, he had posted three additional photos: a Friday açaí bowl, a Saturday gi-folding diagram, and a slow-motion clip from open mat captioned “grateful for the journey.” None of the photos included footage of, or reference to, the chair.
At press time, a second folding chair had been added to the curb.