The dysfunction that can claim families claimed Michelle Coletti”™s.
At 18, she gained legal custody of her 11-year-old brother, Michael.
She was working full time by then, going to school and had her own place. She gained custody of Michael, who had been in a foster home, the moment she turned 18. “Everything happened at once,” she says.
She was likely the only Ivy League freshman raising an 11-year-old. She was, she says, the breadwinner. And when not winning the bread, providing the shelter and the love, she was a Columbia University undergraduate.
You might think such a history would lend itself to a well-earned nap penciled in daily for life, but Coletti, 28, is a self-professed adrenaline junkie. Her new (used) motorcycle, 600 CCs, low and sleek, proves the point.
Coletti is also a volunteer firefighter. Her friend’s mom, Laura Smutek, was a Sleepy Hollow vol when Coletti was a girl. (She’s now a captain.) Coletti identifies Smutek as her role model. Laura Smutek’s daughter Jewell Brandt is also a vol. And Jewell Brandt’s son is Coletti’s godson.
Coletti sits poised and professional in the 288 Mamaroneck Ave. offices of Paddington Stone Realty L.L.C. She is predisposed to look you straight in the eye and, one suspects, similarly predisposed to win admirers during a single meeting.
It was a sale for another real estate company that brought Coletti to Paddington Stone Realty. She sold a condo to founder Adam Kessner’s grandmother and the grandmother sang Coletti’s praises. When Kessner began Paddington Stone one and a half years ago, Coletti came on board.
Coletti offers an athletic handshake and says she has always been active ”“ softball and volleyball are favorites. As such, she did not have any troubles with strength or endurance at the Westchester County Training Center in Valhalla where she trained to fight fires. It was a midwinter regimen she called rigorous. “It was freezing,” she says.
Coletti, a four-year firefighter, dishes only praise for her fellow firefighters in Fire Patrol Rescue 12 from Sleepy Hollow. “Everyone is friendly and helpful,” she says. There is never a hint of untoward behavior. She has responded to “under 30” calls. The other Sleepy Hollow companies are Tower Ladder 38, Columbia Hose, Union Hose and Rescue Hose.
“There’s a rush of adrenaline,” Coletti says of answering the alarm. “It’s exciting. You never hope for something bad, but nonetheless things happen and if you can be there to help, that’s where you want to be.”
She also volunteers “to give back to the Sleepy Hollow community that was so supportive of me after I got custody of Michael.”
Coletti brings a like passion to the business day. “I love what I do,” she says. “I have always been interested in houses, construction and architecture.” She specializes in residential sales and rentals. She was, prior to entering real estate, the office manager for Allstate Construction, then of White Plains and now of Mahopac. “I did a lot of on-site work,” she says. “That’s what I loved.”
Michael is now on his own, living and working as a glazier in Miami. Coletti and he remain very close. Her significant other is Lorna Sobrino, who works for Forbes magazine in Manhattan in the capacity of arranging conferences all over the world. At some point in the next couple of years, Coletti wants to return to Columbia to finish her bachelor’s degree. Life itself won out last time and the degree was put on hold. She’s 20 credits short. She’ll major in business. And in case her adrenaline quotient runs low, “I also like skydiving.”
An hour with Coletti passes quickly. To her many attributes, she can add: a fine storyteller of a story worth telling.
