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AnnaandAnthonyTorchia
OWNERS, CORAL SEA POOLS
nthony and Anna Torchia have owned Coral Sea Pools in Briarcliff Manor since they graduated from high school, and the business runs like clockwork. Anna manages the office staff, and Anthony leads the construction team, building, opening, and
closing pools throughout Westchester.
And they always know that July 4th week-
end will be a busy weekend. But in 2011, an unexpected nightmare happened on June 26, the weekend immediately before Independence Day. Anthony and
his son, Anthony, Jr., then 16, were hanging out in the garage at their home in Ossining. Both Anthony, Jr., and his sister, Daniella, had been riding motorcycles since the age of four, so it wasn’t a big deal to any of them when Anthony, Jr., put on his helmet and goggles, and went for a spin on the family’s four-wheeler.
But the ATV’s grip malfunc- tioned, and Anthony, Jr., crashed into a stone wall. When his father went to check on him, Anthony, Jr., was unconscious, and there was blood coming out of his ears. “I started screaming,” Anthony, 48, says. “I didn’t want to leave him, because I thought he’d die in my arms.”
Anna called 911, and Anthony, Jr., was rushed to the Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital at Westchester Medical Center. His skull was fractured in four places; he had four broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. “They literally were fight- ing to keep him alive,” Anna says, crying as she tells the story more than a year later. “With his head injuries, they didn’t know what they would find. It was a hor- rific, scary experience.” Anthony, Jr., was in critical condition for 12 days and needed four blood trans- fusions. The couple had to make a quick decision about whether they should remove his spleen and opted not to. “Every other day there was another hurdle—a
spleen, blood transfusion, stomach swelling up, water buildup around his lungs,” Anthony recalls.
And while both parents camped out at the hospital—Anna didn’t leave her son’s side for three weeks—Anthony needed to get back to the office to attend to business. “I had to keep the jobs moving even though we were in crisis,” Anthony says. The Torchias purposely run their business so no one is indispens- able, so if a staff member quits on short notice or has a medical emergency, someone else on staff can also do the work. They applied the same philosophy to their own job responsibilities,
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