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It all started innocently enough. Gene Zingaro and his wife and kids were on vacation in Florida with his extended family ”“ his parents, brother and sister and their spouses. “There were 15 or 17 of us and we were sitting around one night and my brother and father were making fun of me that I didn”™t have a big-screen television like the rest of the world,” Zingaro said of the family banter. “I responded that I”™m not going to spend $2,500 on a TV, and that if we had all pooled our $2,500 we could really make a difference in someone”™s life.”
Zingaro”™s mother spotted a teachable moment. She asked, simply, “How?”
“I don”™t know how,” Zingaro said, but began suggesting “a number of different possibilities, like sending someone to college or paying someone”™s oil bill. My mother said we could buy someone a prosthetic.”
That suggestion didn”™t come out of the blue. On the beach earlier that day she had seen a young man in his 20s or 30s rinsing his artificial leg under a shower to clean off the beach sand. “I said, ”˜Yes, that”™s one thing we could do,”™” Zingaro said, “and the conversation drifted away and wasn”™t brought up again.”
Until, that is, a few days after Zingaro and his family returned to their Newtown home. “My mother called and asked me what I had done about researching buying someone a prosthetic,” he said, adding with pride tinged with humor, “She”™s something.”
He told his mother he would look into it.
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Raising $3,500
Zingaro had no concept of the cost of a prosthetic, or how to go about buying one for someone for that matter. “As far as I knew, it could be $75,000 or $7,500,” he said. For starters, he called Bridgeport Hospital, and was referred to a prosthetic appliance operation in Trumbull. He called the business and asked the receptionist how he would go about donating a prosthetic limb. Bring it over, he was told, and they”™ll send it to Africa.
“I want to donate a prosthetic limb to an American,” he said, but was told again that the limb would be sent to Africa. He realized, finally, that “she thought I had the prosthetic limb of a great-uncle who had passed away,” he said, and that when limbs are donated to the company, it sends them to African amputees. “When I explained that I wanted to buy someone a prosthetic, she put me on hold” for the company”™s owner, David Rooney. “He got the idea I was serious about this, and said he actually had someone in mind.”
The limb would cost between $5,000 and $6,000, Rooney told him, “but because he was so taken with the idea, he said he would do it for cost,” Zingaro said. “That first year, I had to raise $3,500.”
“Initially, it was going to be my wife and I and my parents who would pay for it,” he said. “But one night I had the idea of having a pool tournament and party to defray some of the cost. I figured I could raise a thousand bucks.” He envisioned a guy thing and invited his friends to play pool at the 2004 event, have something to eat and contribute to the cause. He wound up with about 45 people at the pool tournament after he hand-delivered invitations to friends and colleagues to explain the reason for the event. At first, he said, most people assumed he knew the recipient, and seemed to be even more receptive when he told them the recipient was a stranger.
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“The first year we raised the whole thing and bought a foot system for a woman in her 50s who had lost her foot 25 years earlier from a drunk driver.” Her insurance paid for the first prosthetic, but would not pay for a newer one. “To her $6,000 was like $60,000.”
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Semper fi
Zingaro grew up in New Fairfield and “wanted to be a lawyer since I was in the ninth grade, based on the show ”˜L.A. Law”™ and an uncle, who was a corporate lawyer in the oil business,” he said. “Now, he”™s a venture capitalist while I”™m still in the law.” He earned a bachelor”™s degree from Fairfield University in 1990, and a J.D. degree from Quinnipiac Law School three years later, and then joined the Marine Corps in April 1994, one month after he married his wife, Colleen.
After the Marines ”“ “I was essentially a lawyer” in the Judge Advocate General Corps ”“ he moved his growing family to Norwalk in 1997 to join a small Bridgeport law firm, doing insurance defense litigation. In 2001, he and a college friend started their own firm in Bridgeport ”“ Zingaro and Cretella. They chose to open their practice in Bridgeport, he said, because the city is centrally located for doing business in upper and lower Fairfield County and in New Haven County.
“I have a general practice and do a lot of civil litigation,” Zingaro said. “I do some family law and low-end criminal defense, misdemeanor and minor felonies and drug and weapons-type offenses. My partner handles those along with serious assaults, homicides and sexual assaults.”
When Colleen was pregnant with the couple”™s third child in 2003, they moved to Newtown. “I wanted to chase in on our starter home and move somewhere where we could get more house for my dollars,” he said. “But the main reason we moved to Newtown was that we wanted a better public school system, and Newtown has a phenomenal one.”
The larger house also gave the Zingaro”™s more room for their annual prosthetics fundraiser. “We have a large tent in the backyard, and people donate everything” ”“ including “about $1,000 worth of high-end raffle prizes like an expensive jersey or Giant football tickets or a $200 box of cigars.” And the pool tournament winners get about $100 each, he said.
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Help for a veteran
The event usually draws between 50 and 75 people, mostly couples after wives began attending the fundraiser the second year. “The first year, we raised $4,500, the second year, $7,500 and the third we netted more than $13,000, which allowed us to do three prosthetics,” Zingaro said. “We found two more recipients after the fundraiser.” Last year, participants began writing checks directly to the Trumbull prosthetics business ”“ Biometrics Inc. (www.biometricsct.com), 2 Corporate Drive, Trumbull 06611.
Last month, the fourth annual event raised more than $10,000 from among the 50 attendees, Zingaro said.
“This year we did something a little different,” Zingaro said. “We had two recipients in mind” ”“ an elderly man who needed a below-the-knee prosthetic for about $5,000, and a ninth-grade boy with cerebral palsy who needed a $1,200 leg brace. His father lost his job and has no insurance.
Later this year Zingaro plans to create a 501(c)(3) organization to draw corporate donations, and is looking for ways to help a veteran. “They get their prosthetics through the government, but there are other things they need,” he said. “I”™m willing to be creative with this. There must be a need out there that isn”™t covered by the government.”
The fundraiser, he said, “really has legs now; it”™s independent.” Best of all, “my mom thinks it”™s one of the best things in the world,” he said. “She is very pleased with what it”™s become.”
