Level Up Fitness owner Robert Tomasulo, kneeling right, with Richard Senato, founder of the Love Holds Life Children’s Cancer Foundation, kneeling left with two of the families diagnosed with cancer who received help this holiday season.
For most, the day before Christmas is a time to grab last-minute gifts or bring groceries home from the store and get ready for the holidays.
Last Friday, Robert Tomasulo and Junior Susca were hard at work doing hundreds of burpees, a strenuous exercise that combines jumping, squats and pushups.
The almost Herculean efforts of Tomasulo, the owner of Level Up Strength & Conditioning in Yorktown Heights, and Susca, one of its coaches, helped raise more than $ 1,400 for the Love Holds Life Children’s Cancer Foundation, a nonprofit based organization in the lower Hudson Valley, to collect.
“It was definitely a challenge, but doing it for the kids mentally helps you get through and then the community we have here at the gym helps us even more,” said Tomasulo, who did 600 burpees while Susca 520 graduated. “So the support of my gym and all the trainers and everything makes it a lot easier.”
After their grueling hour-long activity, two of the families Love Holds Life was helping this Christmas season came to the gym for a brief presentation. Amanda Dumont, who recently moved to Newburgh from Cortlandt and whose nine-year-old daughter Zoe is recovering from cancer, received a check for $ 1,000.
Then Jaya Karnani came from Edgewater, NJ with her seven-year-old daughter Kiah and older son Ten and received $ 2,500 and a gift for each child. Kiah has been battling a rare bone cancer in her jaw for more than a year that resulted in doctors at Sloan Kettering’s children’s department having to remove bones from her leg. Your treatments can last up to 12 hours per visit.
“All of this means the world to us when we see Santa Claus first,” said Karnani. “She almost lost her childhood. I woke her up at seven in the morning and said, ‘Kiah, do you want to wake up and see Santa Claus?’ She’ll say yes because she doesn’t know what tomorrow will be. She knows that she might be stuck in the hospital tomorrow. “
Richard Senato, who started Love Holds Life nearly 10 years ago, said a third family was being helped this Christmas but they couldn’t come because their son was finishing treatment.
In addition to bringing joy over the holidays, Love Holds Life helps families in Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess, north New Jersey and Tampa, Florida the rest of the year, he said.
“We only provide financial support to families during the treatment period, and we will help each family for two years,” said Senato.
Dumont, a single mother, was overwhelmed with emotion when she found out she was going to be a vacation recipient. Somebody at Cortlandt Manor Moms had contacted Love Holds Life to let them know of the challenges Dumont and her daughter were facing.
After the pandemic and Zoe’s fight, it was important to have a nice Christmas this year.
“You arrested me,” said Dumont. “I thought that couldn’t be true.”
Tomasulo and Susca had agreed to make a burpee for every dollar raised at the fitness center by members who put donations in their stockings. Then Tomasulo’s father, Joe, doubled those donations through his Somers company, Madison Environmental & Tank Services.
For that, Susca had to do 520 burpees and 584 for Tomasulo, who decided to round it up to 600. It was tough, but everyone hit their number. A third coach raised extra money but wasn’t there to participate.
“I’ve never gone over 160,” said Susca. “At the end of the day, I kept reminding myself what I was doing this for, for a good cause, especially when I saw these young women. I said okay I have to go ahead. “
To learn more about the Love Holds Life Children’s Cancer Foundation, visit www.loveholdslife.org.
