______________ VALLEY STREAM _____________
HERALD Student Council shapes future
County defends trans order
V.S. 24 says ‘I love you’
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Vol. 35 No. 10
FEBRUARY 29 - MARCH 6, 2024
$1.00
Treated at wound center, he kept his leg By JUAN lASSo jlasso@liherald.com
Tim Baker/Herald
Dr. Devendra Brahmbhatt, a vascular surgeon and the wound center’s medical director, and podiatrist Dr. Mary Ann Bilotti welcome patient Lennox Logan after his post-hyperbaric wound treatment.
Lennox Logan has stared down mortal danger before. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, a hijacked jetliner barreled into the south tower of the World Trade Center about six floors above where Logan worked as a system administration supervisor for Morgan Stanley. He wasn’t in the building. By some stroke of luck, he recalled, he was running late that morning. Heading toward his building along Church Street, within the radius of what would become ground zero, he was plugged into the music on his Walkman until he caught a glance of a woman dropping her purse. He unplugged his music to look at her, noticed her screaming, then looked in her direction, and saw the unthinkable. To this day, he remains as much in awe as he ContinueD on pAge 10
Downtown businesses rebuild after devastating fire By JUAN lASSo and ANGElINA ZINGARIEllo jlasso@liherald.com
In a matter of hours on Jan. 27, a chaotic fire, which started at Jadwiga’s Polish American Deli on West Lincoln Avenue, swept through the heart of the village’s business district, trampling over a trio of locally-owned corner stores on Rockaway Avenue – Long Island Hearing Center of Long Island, Valley Stream Pharmacy, and Orange Skye Day Spa. The destruction leveled against the storefronts, all of which have stood there for years, and in some cases decades, was so complete that they were practically dislocated from the village’s downtown. Now, their business owners are struggling to make their stores
whole again, and for most of them, questions of where to restart and how soon remain unclear. For Dr. Larry Cardano, owner of the Long Island Hearing Center, it was not long after the fire he began scouring for a new location for his hearing practice – and he found one. His new office space, located at 20 West Lincoln Avenue, is a stone’s throw away from his original spot, which he opened in 1996. While some elements of the new office space are still under construction, Cardano has been seeing patients since early February. What’s more, he says that despite the tragic loss of the original office, the new space represents a net gain for himself and his patients. “Our patients don’t have to travel that far from the original site,” he said,
and he refashioned the new office space in a way that allows him to upgrade his equipment based on the newest methods of treatment.” The Hearing Center’s quick rebound, however, appears to be an exception.
Donations pour in to restore downtown stores For the businesses that remain, it stands to reason that replacing what was lost has not been simple. For weeks, family, friends, and employees of the affected business owners have looked online for outside donations. Jadwiga’s Polish American Deli is one of them. For those unfamiliar with Jadwiga’s, the once narrow storefront, operated by Jadwiga Strzepa and her family for nearly two decades, had garnered a rep-
utation as the go-to destination for traditional Polish products, ranging from well-known classics like kielbasa to lesser-known items like pickled mushrooms. Kaisa Jankowski, a lifelong friend of the Strzepa family, launched a GoFundMe campaign to save the deli. “She (Jadwiga) didn’t think twice when someone asked for help and it is times like these, we need to lend a helping hand to such a selfless and caring individual,” Jankowski wrote on the GoFundMe page. “That is why as friends and customers of Jadwiga and her Deli, we ask for your help in getting the family back on their feet. Although thankful that no one was injured, the family is devastated that their long-time family business, ContinueD on pAge 16