Talk Bronx New York

A medical team from Montefiore Medical Center was back in the Bronx from earthquake-ravaged Haiti last week, with tales of grief and suffering, of the miraculous and the extraordinary.

And the team members returned as changed people.

The group of two doctors, a nurse and a technician took an American Airlines flight from New York to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and then a helicopter to the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. They landed in front of the U.S. Embassy and traveled across the city to Clinique Lambert.

“It was a small, private hospital, operated by a plastic surgeon,” said Dr. Dominique Jan, the 57-year-old chief of pediatric surgery at Montefiore. “She opened the doors to medical teams and we were very happy to work under good conditions. We had electricity. We had water and we had sterilization. Read more..

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Maynor Roches employee with just some of the tremendous variety of food and other items offered at Food Bazaar on Bruckner Blvd.

 The Bruckner Plaza is home to great deals. Located off the Bruckner Expressway, near the northbound entrance to the Bronx River Parkway, it’s a quick stop for many Soundview residents.

If you’re looking for foreign food or just want to pamper yourself, this is the place to shop. The plaza houses an array of shops, including Strauss discount auto, Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s and Rent-a-Center to help you get a jump on your errands at the right price.

NAIL SALON: Magni Nails and Spa, 1636 Bruckner Blvd.; (718) 860-0652

Henry Phan’s customers come for the service. He has been manager of this impressive nail salon for 10 years.

Manicures start at $8, eyebrow waxing is $6 and acrylic sets start at $25. Phan’s specialty is gel manicures that dry in three minutes. The excellent work and friendly faces keep people coming back. Read more..

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Maxi Phalone (right) reacts after her sister was pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed building in Port-au-Prince on Monday, January 18. Bronx residents have responded to Haiti’s earthquake with donations but more help is needed. Photo by Julie Jacobson

In two decades as a clergyman, Rev. Nathanael Saint-Pierre has never worked so many hours, consoled so many congregants, seen so many tears. Saint-Pierre heads the Haitian Congregation of the Good Samaritan Episcopal Church on E. 219th Street in the Bronx and has led the borough’s response to the earthquake that devastated Haiti on Tuesday, January 12.

“We Haitians in New York City are sad and frustrated,” he said. “I have never had to face such hard issues.”

Saint-Pierre was fortunate not to lose any family members in the disaster but many of his congregants did. More have struggled to contact family members and friends in hastily constructed shelters amid the ruble. Good Samaritan has gathered food and donations for those trapped on the impoverished Caribbean island and Haitians trapped here in New York City as well.

“One of my [congregant’s] families lost six people,” Saint-Pierre said. “One man who lost his sister was unable to find a funeral home in Port-au-Prince and there are no commercial flights to Haiti. He had to have someone there transfer the body to the Dominican Republic [to be cremated]. When commercial flights start again he’ll get the ashes. He needs to grieve but to grieve is not easy.”

The daughter of one congregant brought her daughter to the United States for Christmas. Her home in Haiti has been destroyed and she has no way to return but no job or legal status here. Saint-Pierre hopes to raise money and help the woman gain legal status.

“Unfortunately, we cannot only focus on those in Haiti,” Saint-Pierre said. “There are also crises here.”

Although the Bronx boasts hundreds of thousands of Caribbean immigrants, many from the Dominican Republic, which borders Haiti, the borough is home to only 4,196 people of Haitian heritage and 2,455 Haitian immigrants, census records reveal. In comparison, the Bronx is home to some 143,000 Dominicans and nearly 49,000 Jamaicans. Read more..

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“It is beyond anybody’s imagination when I started that a Puerto Rican could ascend to that position, to the Supreme Court,” said Edwin Torres, who in 1959 was hired as the first Puerto Rican assistant district attorney in New York

In the summer of 1959, Edwin Torres landed a $60-a-week job and wound up on the front page of El Diario. He had just been hired as the first Puerto Rican assistant district attorney in New York — and probably, he thinks, the entire United States.

He still recalls the headline: “Exemplary Son of El Barrio Becomes Prosecutor.”

“You would’ve thought I had been named attorney general,” he said. “That’s how big it was.” Read more..

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Disgraced former state Sen. Efrain Gonzalez’s sweetheart scored a sweetheart deal Monday.

Lucia (Lucy) Sanchez admitted her role in Gonzalez’s theft of $200,000 in public money, but as part of a plea deal with the feds, she faces a likely sentence of between four and 10 months in prison.

Sanchez, 52, pleaded guilty to committing federal program fraud during a hearing before Manhattan Federal Court Judge William Pauley.

Prosecutors say Sanchez gave the Bronx-based nonprofit Pathways for Youth dummy documents to justify payments Pathways made to the West Bronx Neighborhood Association. That money was then used to pay Gonzalez’s personal expenses, Sanchez admitted, including rent a luxury apartment in the Dominican Republic for Gonzalez’s wife.

Sanchez said she never imagined when she went to work for West Bronx in the 1990s that she’d be accused of committing a federal crime. Read more..

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