ROBERT DESTEFANO - The cliche about developers is that they parachute into a community from somewhere else, leave behind their piles of steel and concrete or acres of sprawling suburbs, take their money, and go.

This caricature often has little connection with the truth. Certainly it has no bearing on the career of Robert DeStefano, the determined and visionary businessman who gave Anne Arundel County the mixed-use Village at Waugh Chapel in Gambrills and Park Plaza in Severna Park.

DeStefano, who died last week at 77, after a long struggle with dementia, didn't merely pay lip service to giving back to the...