Dominick and Diane Camerada (Chad Rachman/New York Post)
FACE TIME: President Obama chats with Dominick and Diane Camerada (also at right) during a tour of their devastated Staten Island neighborhood of New Dorp yesterday. “He’s a human being. He felt my pain,” Dominick said. (
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Dominick Camerada is still waiting for the storm to pass.
After the flood from Hurricane Sandy filled his Staten Island home with five feet of water, the car he bought his oldest son as a high-school graduation present floated four blocks away.
When Camerada finally got heat in his 30-degree New Dorp bedroom, Con Ed shut off the gas to his house because there was water in the main line. Then looters raided his shed and stole all his tools.
And, as if that weren’t enough, in the midst of all the turmoil, his guy lost the big election — on his birthday.
Camerada, 50, is a fast talker. In an unplanned five-minute meeting yesterday with the president of the United States — the president of the United States — the retired UPS worker managed to share his entire tale of hardship.
Well, almost the entire tale. That part about voting for the other guy he kept to himself.
“Did I vote for Obama?” Camerada said later, after the president’s helicopter took off and whisked him back to Washington. “No, I didn’t. I’ve been a Democrat all my life, a union guy, a shop steward. But I needed to send him a message. I knew he was going to win, but I wanted to give him a wake-up call.”
But that was before the leader of the free world sauntered down Camerada’s street, hugged his wife, Diane, like a church pastor would, and shook the father’s hand and looked him in the eye.
And listened. Oh, he made a couple of speeches during the day, thanked hardworking relief workers, that sort of thing.
But with Camerada, the president listened. For five whole minutes.
That’s more time than some Cabinet secretaries get.
“It gave me some kind of consolation,” Camerada said.
“It’s no easy thing to get on a helicopter and jump down in the middle of a disaster area.”
The weary homeowner made the most of his meeting. He told the president of the United States that the $19,000 he was offered from FEMA for his family’s pain and suffering was “a slap in the face.”
“What would $19,000 do for anybody down here?”
He said he used those words.
“There’s gotta be something you can do to make things right down here,” one man told the other man.
“We had a heart to heart,” Camerada said later.
Obama didn’t get Camerada’s vote. But he might have earned something better. He got the voter’s confidence.
“He’s a human being. He felt my pain. I not only spoke for myself, but for my community,” Camerada said.
“He said he would try to ‘pass a law for more disaster funds.’ He said he ‘was going to try to make it right.’ ”
Camerada isn’t going to pretend to know exactly what that means.
He’s also not going to pretend that he and his wife and their four boys are going to wake up tomorrow in the freezing, dark house where they have stayed since the hurricane and everything will be back to normal.
“I’m the only provider for my family,” he said.
“You don’t turn your back on your family. I spent almost every penny that I had. My whole life is invested in this house.”
The storm is going to stay awhile.
But he can get out of the cold bed in the morning secure in the knowledge that after pulling out all the wet drywall, and finding new parts for the boiler, and stacking all the memories on the sidewalk, after all that, he can feel like he did his part because he shook another man’s hand, looked him in the eye and did what any real man would do for his family and his community.
He asked for help.