A post-Sandy rebirth
Blow on this one, Sandy. Mary Ann Daino and Dennis Krauss didn’t know each other on Oct. 29, 2012, when Hurricane Sandy rampaged into town. Both were single, disabled and then left homeless at age 62 by Sandy’s last gasp.
Today they are a loving couple who would never have met if not tossed together by the winds of Sandy, they just hit the lottery for more than a quarter million and they’re searching for a new home.
Daino’s story appeared here after Sandy struck.
“I wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for Aiman Youssef,” said Daino, who was in her home on Midland Ave., S.I., with her five beloved cats when the hurricane hit.
“I had nowhere to go with the cats, so I stayed to wait out the storm,” she said. “Then when night fell and the Sandy winds howled, I began to worry because the water started filling up my first floor.”
She grabbed her pocketbook and opened the front door to get help to rescue her cats when she was swept into a giant, ferocious wave rushing down Midland Ave.
“I immediately lost my pocketbook,” she told me. “I spun like a bar of soap a full city block, grasping at the tops of 9-foot-high cyclone fences. That’s how high the water was. I finally landed in the high branches of a tree in front of 501 Midland Ave. Trapped. Certain I was gonna die.”
She reached for a black cable tangled in the branches. “Then I heard the booming voice of a man above the storm,” Daino said. “‘Stop! Don’t touch that live wire!’ It was Aiman Youssef, braced against a stone fence. But in that moment, Aiman was the voice of God himself. I froze. The cable started spitting blue sparks. Aiman saved me from electrocution.”
Youssef tossed her a heavy-duty extension cord, and hauled her to safety. “I lost my home but I got my five cats back,” said Daino.
Her lucky streak has continued since. Her name was one of 15 picked at random in a church drawing for a one-year rent-free trailer in a trailer park in Connecticut, paid for by the Tunnel to Towers charity. Still, more good fortune. “At the trailer park I met this cool guy named Dennis Krauss who lost his home in Gerritsen Beach,” Brooklyn, Daino said. “He helped all the Sandy victims in the trailer park.”
The homeless woman from Staten Island and the homeless man from Brooklyn hooked up. “After the free year was up the trailers were auctioned off,” said Krauss. “A good Samaritan bought Mary Ann’s and offered us a two-year lease at a reasonable rent. We moved in together.”
“Last Oct. 12, my sister’s birthday, I bought a Quick Pick Five Card Cash Lottery ticket at the Hess station on Route 7 near our trailer in Gaylordsville, Conn.,” Daino remembers. “When I checked the numbers I had a 10 of Clubs, 5 of Clubs, 2 of Hearts, Ace of Diamonds and a 6 of Diamonds. Then the ticket said, ‘Congratulations. You Are the Winner of $255,555.’ I started to shake. My heart raced. Couldn’t breathe. Could hardly talk.”
She asked the counter lady to confirm she’d won. “She jumped up and down and hugged me,” Daino said. “I ran outside to Dennis waiting in the car and told him we won. He said, ‘If you’re busting my chops, I’ll kill ya.’ I showed him the ticket. We hugged. We kissed. I wept.”
“I told her this wasn’t for anything else but a new home,” Krauss said. “When we buy a house with no mortgage we’ll be comfortable for life.”
They didn’t cash the ticket until April 6, the day after Easter, a symbolic celebration of rebirth. “After taxes we cleared $175,000,” said Daino. “Sandy left me homeless and alone and now because of Sandy I met the love of my life, I hit the lottery and we’re shopping for the house of our dreams.”
Blow on that, Sandy.