OTTY 2011 Extravaganza
The 2011 Our Town Thanks You (OTTY) awards ceremony took place Feb. 22 at Mount Sinai Hospital. The OTTY awards celebrate all of the people who are working hard to make the Upper East Side such a great place to live.
—Allen Houston, executive editor
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Our Town Thanks Them
A hospital executive who regularly gives her cell number to patients? A young attorney raised in the suburbs who spends his spare time inspiring troubled teens to go to college? A church rector who helps orphans living with the consequences of HIV in Africa as well as the hungry on the Upper East Side?
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.
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OTTYS RESTAURATEURS: Eighth Decade on Second Ave. for German Eatery
Heidelberg owner started out washing dishes
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.
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OTTYS RESTAURATEURS: A Taste of Mexico on the Upper East Side
Maz Mezcale owners in love with the restaurant and each other
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.
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OTTYS REAL ESTATE ROYALTY: Works on Multi-Billion Dollar Deals & Affordable Housing
Real estate attorney worked on World Trade Center lease just before 9/11
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.
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OTTYS HEALTH CARE PRO: Helping Patients Who Can’t Speak English
Head of Beth Israel’s Asian Center regularly gives out her cell number
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.
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OTTYS HEALTH CARE PRO: Putting Her Heart in It
Cardiologist’s mission is to get people to take better care
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.
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OTTYS HEALTH CARE PRO: Social Worker’s Prescription: Listen to Patients
Mt. Sinai patients’ advocate helps them fight health bureaucracy
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.
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OTTYS ENTREPRENEURS: Gentile Touch at Neighborhood Grocery
They send up soup when regular customers get sick
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.
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OTTYS ENTREPRENEURS: 1 Plus 1 Running a Math Center
Young couple teaches students how to understand numbers
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.
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