To these dedicated community people we say: “Our Town Thanks You.” They are just three of the 19 OTTY winners we profile this week in our annual salute to people making our neighborhood better. OTTYs are selected by Manhattan Media editors and executives, in consultation with neighborhood leaders.

Our East Sider of the Year is Diane Becker, the longtime manager and new owner of Elaine’s, who is keeping the storied restaurant’s tradition alive after the passing of Elaine Kaufman.

This year, we also say thanks to the owners of two family businesses that have been serving the UES for about a century—ASJ Gentile Grocer and Glaser’s Bake Shop—and honor two accomplished leaders who are stepping down later this year—Anne Poulet, executive director of the Frick Collection, and Rev. Andrew Mullins, rector of Church of the Epiphany.

EAST SIDER OF THE YEAR: Diane Becker
BRAVEST AND FINEST: Matthew Whelan
BRAVEST AND FINEST:  Jay Schofield
COMMUNITY BUILDERS: Latha Thompson
COMMUNITY BUILDERS: Kenneth Laub
THE CLERGY: Reverend Canon Andrew J.W. Mullins
CULTURE CLUB: Anne Poulet
THE EDUCATOR: Dimitri Saliani
ENTREPRENEURS: Herbert Jr. and John Glaser
ENTREPRENEURS: Marc and Tammy Goldberg
ENTREPRENEURS: Antonio Gentile
HEALTH CARE PRO: Penny Schwartz
HEALTH CARE PRO: Dr. Holly S. Andersen
HEALTH CARE PRO: Selina Chan
REAL ESTATE ROYALTY: Charles Dorego
RESTAURATEURS: Mary and Eduardo Silva
RESTAURATEURS: Eva Matischak
COMMUNITY BUILDER: Elsbeth Reimann
CHARITY: Justin Carroll

By Channon Hodge

Heidelberg Restaurant is reminiscent of grandma’s living room—warm and cozy, speckled with holiday decorations, and filled with people so at ease they must all be related.

Against an influx of box-stores and high-rises, Heidelberg has remained a stalwart reminder of Yorktown’s more German-populated days since the 1930s. They serve German brews and a home-style menu laden with schnitzel, potatoes and boiled pig’s knuckle.

Eva Matischak, 57, first washed dishes after school in the restaurant run by her parents. They were German immigrants who brought her and her siblings here from Argentina. She took over the place in 1988 and worked hard to see it endure as a place customers and employees feel at home, no matter what changed around it.

She said developers offered her $10 million years ago to sell so they could demolish the block, but she couldn’t imagine it.

“I couldn’t bring myself to end this place,” said Matischak in an interview. “I couldn’t do it. Thirty-five people were depending on me for a job.”

Matischak’s employees may depend on her, but she said their relationship with customers drives success. She relies on each employee’s best features and pays less attention to weaknesses.

“I’d like to say I treat everybody well,” she said. “It’s kind of like, you know, coming home.”

Many of the staff have worked there for decades. Walter Cordero, 50, the chef, has been here for 30 years. He said Matischak is good to him and he’s always felt needed.

“Everyone that works here, this is their passion,” Cordero said after a shift. “It’s not just a waiter or a waitress job; they’re proud to be here.”

The staff adds to its character, wearing lederhosen and dirndls and cannily predicting who needs a refill before they ask.

Eva Matischak is one of many small business owners who have been hurt by Second Avenue subway construction. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

On a Friday, Frank and Marie Itri, 10-year patrons, sat at the bar surrounded by new and established East Siders and two younger men very slowly draining large glass boots of beer. Once mostly German, now students mix with families and it’s packed by 8 p.m.

Frank Itri, a chef, praised Heidelberg’s food and easy atmosphere.

“It’s always light-hearted,” he said. “It’s always hospitable. It’s my favorite German restaurant.”

The Itris, like many, drive in from outside the city. Parking became difficult during Second Avenue subway construction, and problems contributed to a 40-percent reduction in business last summer, according to Deiter Weber, 42, Matischak’s nephew who also works at Heidelberg’s.

Weber remembers many hard times. In the ’80s, he said Heidelberg’s was on its last leg. Still, he only recalls them closing one day for his grandmother’s memorial service. Luise Edler was strong but warm, and taught him how to gamble. An ad she did for Jägermeister hangs in front. His grandfather, Horst, now lives upstate.

Nowadays, Matischak is starting to take more time for other loves, like riding horses and developing a natural dairy farm upstate.

Her son Andreas Matischak, 27, a pilot and skydiver, will take on more responsibility.

He realizes now how hard his mother has worked and all she sacrificed. After graduating from Skidmore College, she spent her life at Heidelberg’s. She also raised her son mostly by herself.

Andreas admits he was not an easy kid to raise. He said his mother was tough but was always his friend.

Weber observed that his aunt’s parenting struck similarly with the way she ran the restaurant through the years.

“She never dwelled on any of the negative issues,” Weber said. “And she just kept on going with the positives.”

By Rochana Rapkins

New York restaurateurs Mary and Eduardo Silva met four decades ago when his car broke down on a dusty road in Indiana outside of the air force base where he was stationed. She bought him gas, and the two stayed in touch even after he was shipped off to Vietnam. They married soon after he returned, and have been partners ever since.

“It’s miraculous,” Mary Silva said. “And we still like each other.”

Mary, 58, who is of German, French and Irish ancestry, didn’t know anything about the restaurant business when the couple married. “I just got lucky and married into it,” she said.

For Eduardo, 60, the restaurant business runs in the family. His grandmother owned a restaurant that served light fare in Mazatlan, Mexico, in the ’50s and ’60s. His father began working as a fruit picker, but moved into the restaurant business. He was dropped off in New York after basic training, when peace broke out, and liked the city so much he returned to the area to establish a string of Upper East Side eateries. Now the couple’s 14-year-old daughter Gabrielle helps out in the restaurant as a hostess and takes delivery orders. Asked if she will follow in the family business, she says she can’t imagine working anywhere else.

Even in his time off, her father can be found cooking up world cuisine in their home across the street.

“It’s so natural to me,” he said, describing his calling. “I sometimes feel more at home being in a restaurant than at home.”

Eduardo and Mary Silva. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

Maz Mezcal has been at its current East 86th Street location since 1987, but some customers have been coming for 40 years. They order flautas, tamales, tacos, enchiladas and mole poblano, as well as fish and shrimp dishes native to Mazatlan.

“I try to make sure they are true to the form of my father’s recipes,” Eduardo said. Constancy, he says, is tricky to achieve in the restaurant business.

The Silvas vacation in Mexico, and say they also enjoy the tranquility of the New Mexico desert. During these vacations, Eduardo has picked out the sketches and paintings that line Maz Mezcal’s brightly colored walls. The most recent acquisitions are a row of “Katrinas”—elegantly dressed female figurines of skeletons popularized in Dia de los Muertos celebrations.

In addition to her work at the restaurant, Mary is active with the East 86th Street Task Force, where she focuses on homelessness, community beautification and improving street safety. She is what her husband calls a “representative of conscience of what should be fair to people in our community.”

He has a slight Texas twang and the expansive air of a cattle rancher, yet he appears comfortable with his life in the metropolis.

“For us, this is our world,” he explained. “The people who come here, for those two hours they don’t believe they are in New York. They are in Mexico. I’m in New York, but I really don’t feel like a New Yorker.”

“He’s made it into his own world,” his wife added, smiling. “To which we invite the neighborhood.”

By Herpreet Kaur Grewal

Before becoming senior vice president and general counsel of a Manhattan-based real estate company, Charles Dorego harbored dreams of being an actor.

“I wanted to become an actor, so I came to live on the Upper East Side,” said Brooklyn-born Dorego. He recalls taking an apartment at 515 E. 83rd St., and auditioning for parts in the mid-1970s.

He had some success and appeared in a few Off-Broadway shows and was hired by Marvel Comics to make appearances as Spider-Man and Captain America, but said, “It wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped, so I decided to go back to school.”

He returned to college to finish his undergraduate education, majoring in political science and English, before enrolling in Brooklyn Law School. He went to work for Manhattan law firm Stroock & Stroock, where he stayed for 18 years.

Charles Dorego has helped Glenwood Management build 20-percent affordable apartments in many of its buildings. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

A few days before 9/11, Dorego joined real-estate company Glenwood Management. He came on board while Stroock & Stroock was finishing the long-term lease of the World Trade Center by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to developer Larry Silverstein. Dorego said he was proud to be involved in what was “the largest real estate transaction in the city—maybe the country—at the time.”

Dorego was a part of the transaction team for about 10 months, but then “went from working on the World Trade Center to being a spectator while [the tragic events] were unfolding.”

He said, “I remember my sister-in-law calling me and saying, ‘Your buildings are being attacked.’ We were pretty attached to the transaction and the buildings in a symbolic way and it was horrifying.”

But in the aftermath, Dorego became a part of the team at Glenwood to erect the first building near the Ground Zero site in the Financial District, a luxury apartment building, Liberty Plaza.

Dorego, 57, is proud of Glenwood Management’s involvement in the 80/20 housing program. The 80/20 program offers financing for buildings where 20 percent of the units are rented to low- and moderate-income households and the rest are leased at market rates. “I believe this is the best program that the state and the city has for creating low-cost housing. That’s something that I’m very proud of in respect to my involvement with Glenwood Management,” he said.

He is also involved in various local issues, whether it is improving access to walkways for local residents or more high-profile problems. He is involved with the Gracie Point Community Council in an ongoing campaign to prevent the building of a garbage transfer station at East 91st Street.

Dorego also helps to fundraise for the Litwin Foundation, a nonprofit private foundation set up by founder of Glenwood Management, Leonard Litwin.

Negotiating the needs and wants of different groups when building on sites is not one of the easiest parts of his job. “You can’t just take a piece of land and put a building on it,” he said. He listens to state government officials, community groups and local politicians, and acknowledged that “building in and operating in the city of New York has an enormous number of hurdles” and patience is needed. But he has a way to cope: “You’ve got to take everything with a little humor. If you take things too seriously, you’ll make yourself crazy.”

By Tierney McAfee

When Selina Chan was a teenager living in Hong Kong, she made frequent trips to the hospital with her mother, who had an acute gall bladder infection.

“One time she was in desperate need of nursing help and a lot of the staff gave her very bad attitude,” Chan recalled.

That was the moment Chan, who had planned to be an accountant, decided to go to nursing school instead.

“I was quite upset at that time and I told the nursing staff, ‘You give me a couple of years, and I will come back and show you how a good nurse is supposed to be,’” Chan said. “I wanted to devote my career to nursing to help sick patients.”

More than 30 years later, Chan is living up to her word. As executive director of the Asian Services Center at Beth Israel Medical Center, she plays a lead role in strengthening the relationship between Beth Israel and the large Chinese-American community in its service area.

The center offers enhanced access to the medical center, helps patients navigate complex hospital systems, and holds health-related conferences and educational activities.

Selina Chan runs Beth Israel’s Asian Services Center. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

“We use the patient as our focus,” Chan said. “We are here as a patient’s advocate and also as the patient’s voice. We make the patient really feel we do participate and we do help.”

Chan, 60, has many roles. She oversees inpatient and ambulatory patient care, collaborates with community-based partners to promote health services for the Chinese-American community, and works closely with the Chinese media to distribute health guidelines.

Chan helps Chinese-speaking patients understand the details of their diagnosis and treatment. Chan, who immigrated to New York City in 1977, relates closely to such patients and encourages her staff to empathize with them as well.

“I tell my staff, ‘When you get sick and you’re in completely strange surroundings and no one speaks your language, how will you feel?’” she said.

Chan said the work she and her staff do has had a huge impact on the Asian community since the center’s opening in 2005.

“If a patient isn’t doing well, sometimes they say they want to go back to China to get treatment,” Chan said. “But if we really comfort the patient and spend some time sitting down with them, patients change their attitude right away.”

Chan also gives out her cell phone number to patients and encourages them to call her anytime. She has kept the same cell phone number for 20 years so past patients can keep in touch with her. Sometimes former patients call or send cards to thank Chan or update her on their condition.

“It’s very rewarding,” Chan said. “Sometimes money can’t buy that kind of reward.”

Chan has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. Prior to joining Beth Israel, she served as director of Asian community relations at St. Vincent’s Hospital and associate nursing director at the Workmen’s Circle Nursing Home.

Chan feels honored to receive an OTTY award.

“It is my best gift for the Chinese New Year,” she said, smiling.

By Annie Lubin

Passion is a word that is thrown out a lot when speaking about community leaders. Then again, passion comes from the heart, and the heart is definitely something Upper East Sider Dr. Holly S. Andersen knows a lot about.

A leading authority on preventive cardiology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, Dr. Andersen has made the heart her forte for the past 16 years. Yet it is her most recent appointment as the director of education and outreach at the Ronald O. Perelman Heart Institute that has brought her passion front and center.

“Having this role has enabled me to do so much more. I’m able to reach not just physicians but policy makers, council members, church groups, corporations…” said Andersen.

“Educating our society will save lives,” she said, which is why she is so adamant about making sure everyone knows the leading causes of heart disease—poor diet, lack of exercise, stress and smoking.

Dr. Holly S. Andersen. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

Andersen, 48, has taken a multifaceted approach to her new role, targeting everything and everyone from government agencies and lobbyists to corporations, and working in tandem with the American Heart Association. This also means plenty of speaking engagements at various schools, corporate meetings, churches and even the occasional cocktail party.

Andersen is trying to reach every different age group and race, and trying to educate a population that she pointed out is more obese, more sedentary and more stressed than ever before.

She has appeared on numerous national and local television segments, and is on the health advisory board at Ladies’ Home Journal.

“It’s extremely rewarding to step up and train others to go out in the community and help people understand,” said Andersen.

Lisa Mainieri, manager of the Cardiac and Vascular Service Lines, called Andersen tireless in her quest to reinforce the importance of prevention, and credits her personality for her effectiveness, saying, “When you speak with her, you truly believe she has a vested interest in your personal health.”

Andersen especially loves the grassroots aspects of her role. “When you can educate a woman, you can educate a family,” she said. “Teach women how to cook a little better, and you’re teaching a generation. We have to change the culture of food.”

With two young children of her own—Alison, 10, and Gregory, 7—Andersen knows there is still a lot to be accomplished to forge healthy habits for the next generation.

Andersen is trying to get the message across to schools where standard lunches are often a doctor’s worst nightmare. “My son, he’s eating hot dogs at lunch. Really?” said an astonished Andersen.

She has begun to tackle awareness campaigns in schools, most recently working with board members at charter schools in Harlem to bring in healthy lunch programs.

“Things are slowly beginning to change,” said Andersen, taking note of the evolving scenery of her neighborhood, pointing out the increase of healthy options at restaurants and grocery stores.

For Andersen, there’s still a lot left on her to-do list. It might be hard for people to hear they need to change their lifestyle, but as Andersen says, she is usually met not with opposition, but with astonishment.

“It’s about taking people away from the busy stress modes of survival and saying, ‘Look this is important,’” said Andersen. “Don’t wait for the problem, start now.”

By Tierney McAfee

A couple of years of ago, a woman with stage IV colon cancer came to see Penny Schwartz, the program coordinator in the Department of Social Work Services at the Mount Sinai Medical Center.

The woman had been to five different hospitals, but she was refused treatment because she was uninsured and couldn’t pay for the care.

Schwartz soon discovered why the woman couldn’t apply for Medicaid—she was afraid to reveal her identity because of a domestic violence situation.

Schwartz, who knows the ins, outs and access points of the health care system, was able to persuade higher-ups at Medicaid to give the patient—who was fully eligible—benefits under a different social security number and process her case by hand to ensure that the patient would remain safe.

Penny Schwartz. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

As a result, the woman received treatment and ended up living five years instead of only one.

“Without help navigating this complex system, this patient would have died much sooner because she was at stage IV,” Schwartz said.

As the director of REAP, the Resource, Entitlement and Advocacy Program at Mount Sinai, Schwartz is responsible for helping people obtain and understand their benefits and entitlements, especially those that relate to health-care access.

REAP, which was founded in 1989 with a grant from Mount Sinai, predominately serves people from Yorkville, East Harlem and Central Harlem. Its goal is to provide people with information and assistance with applying for government entitlements, public health insurance programs, home-care services and other specialized programs.

“We’re talking to people about two of the most private things in the world—their bodies and their money. So trust is very important,” Schwartz said.

Schwartz said it is also important to understand each patient in order to better help them navigate the health-care system.

“The health-care system is very complex. I can tell you stories about people with doctorate degrees who could not figure out how to access heath care for their mothers,” Schwartz said. “It’s like a foreign language—we call it ‘insurancese’—so I consider us the translators.”

The REAP program also determines the sliding scale fee rate for outpatients who are ineligible for public health benefits, and ensures that members of the community with limited or no health insurance have access to high-quality health-care services.

The help REAP provides extends outside the office. Schwartz and her staff coordinate paperwork for patients and represent them at insurance offices. They also make sure to take care of the patients’ family members.

“If someone comes to us and says they need Medicaid, we look at everybody who they are responsible for or who is responsible for them,” Schwartz said.

Schwartz, who received her doctorate of social welfare from Hunter College and her Masters of Science in social work from Columbia University, said her greatest reward is helping her patients.

“People who come to us are very often lost and they don’t know where to turn,” she said. “Patients get more access to care if they come to us.”

By Matt Draper

When Antonio Gentile opened ASJ Gentile Grocer on the Upper East Side in 1927, he hoped it would become a community staple. More than 80 years later, the store is a neighborhood fixture and one of the East Side’s most-loved markets—thanks in part to Antonio’s grandsons, Anthony and Jimmy.

Gentile Grocer, a small store on Madison Avenue between 79th and 80th streets, hasn’t moved far or changed much during its eight decades in operation. The original store was located at 85th Street and Lexington Avenue, and, after moving around the neighborhood a couple of times, has operated in its current space since 1970. As far as products, it began selling meat, fruit and vegetables, and eventually incorporated a deli counter with sandwiches and take-out food.

Anthony and Jimmy started working at the store in the mid-1980s and took over operations from their father in the late ’90s. While Jimmy, 48, came on board immediately after high school, Anthony, 60, worked for the State of New York after college.

Anthony, Maria and Jimmy Gentile run ASJ Gentile Grocer. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

“The state was paying me $135 a week and my father said, ‘Why are you doing that? I’ll double it,’” said Anthony, standing next to the store’s deli counter on a busy afternoon. “I said, ‘Oh, I’ll help out, I’ll do that for a little while.’”

It’s been a labor of love ever since. Driven by a staff of about a dozen employees—many of whom have been there for more than 20 years—Gentile Grocer maintains a focus on quality products and superior customer service.

“Some of our customers we deliver to five or six times a day,” said Anthony, noting that the store’s delivery service includes more than 300 accounts, including several famous neighbors, such as Mayor Bloomberg.

“If someone comes in to pay and they’re short, we just say, ‘Listen, pay whenever you get a chance to come back,’” Anthony said, adding that repeat customers make up about 90 percent of the store’s business. “What we really sell here is service and quality.”

Part of the personal touch comes from Anthony and Jimmy’s mother, Maria Gentile, or “Mrs. G,” who, at 82 years old, works several days a week greeting customers, and sends handwritten cards to the store’s delivery accounts each holiday season.

Gentile Grocer has built a strong connection with its Upper East Side neighbors.

“They know you and they know your name,” said Susannah Bianchi, an Upper East Side resident who has been shopping at the store since 1979. “When I’m sick, they always send me soup.”

Outside Gentile Grocer, the city’s grocery business has changed dramatically, said Jimmy

“What drives most people crazy? You call something and you get ‘dial this, press this,’” he said. “You call us up, all you do is tell us your name and we know what you buy.”

The neighborhood connection goes both ways, said Anthony.

“You know what the best thing is? Our clientele,” he said, adding that he started taking pictures of his older customers several years ago because so many had passed on.

In terms of the future of the store, Anthony and Jimmy don’t plan to retire anytime soon, though both have college-aged sons that could potentially get into the business.

“People say, ‘Hire a manager,’” said Anthony, who estimated he and Jimmy typically work 60 to 70 hours per week.

“But it’s not the same soulful thing when it’s [not] your own. It wouldn’t be the same quality or the same personality.”

By Max Sarinsky

For Marc and Tammy Goldberg, learning math is about flexibility. As operators of the math tutoring and enrichment franchise Mathnasium, they’ve embraced the idea that learning math is fundamentally not about memorizing equations or data sets, bur rather gaining the flexibility to solve a wide array of problems conceptually. This is the philosophy that the husband-and-wife duo wishes they had been introduced to long ago.

“I always tell them that multiplication doesn’t stop at 12,” Marc said, joking about how students are frequently made to memorize multiplication tables at school without understanding the theory behind them—just as he and his wife were taught at school in Toms River, N.J.

The couple describes the Mathnasium philosophy—the curriculum is handed down from corporate headquarters, which oversees more than 200 franchises around the country—as building intuitive connections between different numbers and concepts. For instance, they encourage students to think of the number 12 as 10+2, which they say makes it easier for students to use it in equations and ultimately build the knowledge base being emphasized in schools. “You can build fact fluency without it being memorization,” Marc said.

Marc and Tammy Goldberg are directors of Mathnasium’s Upper East and West Side locations. Photo by Andrew Schwartz

The couple said that this not only teaches students to build connections between mathematical concepts, but often inspires a confidence that rubs off into other areas. “Kids come in who are so beaten down,” Tammy said, noting that many students become dejected by their inability to grasp math being taught in school. “To influence how a child sees themself… math is a great way to get them there.”

Tammy first developed the idea to open a math center in 2007, less than a year into the couple’s marriage. At the time, they were both struggling artists—she an actress, he a musician—although Tammy was a former math teacher and remained a tutor in Long Island. Tammy acknowledged being skeptical of the Mathnasium philosophy at first, but came around after her mother, a former teacher in New Jersey herself, opened her own Mathnasium and gave a ringing endorsement.

Marc, an accountant by education, was originally going to serve just as a financial consultant when their first center opened on the Upper East Side in the fall of 2008, but quickly got roped in.

The Goldbergs, who are both 31, said that they often hire instructors with a background in the arts. “We want people who are fun,” Tammy said. “Who are willing to learn new ways of teaching,” Marc added.

They said that their approach occasionally clashed with students or parents seeking test preparation. But Marc said that “we believe too strongly in our principles” to change teaching methods. “I feel like we really have the students’ best interests at heart,” Tammy added.

The couple opened a second Mathnasium franchise on the Upper West Side this past fall. They said that they now have about 150 students in total between the two franchises, most in elementary school or junior high.

Marc said that the experience has given him more confidence as a parent, teaching him the importance of patience and setting realistic expectations. The couple has a 1-year-old son, and Tammy only returned to work full-time a few months ago.

“All these ideas that I had and we had… we couldn’t do it,” Marc said about Tammy’s absence. He said that they both became stressed during her leave, and have enjoyed sharing domestic and commercial responsibilities since her return.

“We’ve taken off since then,” he said. “Everything is aligning itself much better.”