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SARATOGA SPRINGS — Senator James Tedisco received the 2019 John Walsh Award at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, New York Branch’s Dish it Out Celebrity Chef Gala event, held last Friday night, June 28, at the Saratoga National Golf Club.
The event’s full name comes from the fact that while the focus of the event was on the John Walsh award, it was not the only aspect of the event. There was a cooking competition for best appetizer, entree and dessert between the likes of Solevo Kitchen & Social, Yono’s and Sweet Mimi’s Cafe and Bakery, the winners of each respective category.
Due to the event also being the Center’s main fundraiser for the year, there was also a silent auction going throughout the night with over 150 items and a
live auction at the end for various items and luxuries. The live auction had items ranging from aBaume&Mercierwatch,valued at $990, to dinner for six at Yono’s with a five-course chef’s tasting menu, valued at with the auction ending on a full pool, including landscaping and fencing, which sold for $22,500.
Michael Giovanone, the John Walsh award’s first recipient, introduced Tedisco, saying how his dedication to protection children “has literally spanned decades,” and listing off various achievements Tedisco has accomplished in his 45 years in politics, from the most recent Susan’s Law, which increases punishments against criminals who attack or abduct children on school grounds, to his 10 years as a Special Education teacher and coach.
“The Senator has passed legislation requiring schools to notify parents when their child is being bullied, or is the one that’s bullying,”
Giovanone said. “As assembly minority leader, Senator Tedisco was a driving force in the passage of New York State’s Civil Confinement Law to keep dangerous sex predators out of our communities. As Chair of the Assembly Minority Taskforce on Missing Children, Senator Tedisco sponsored and passed New York’s landmark Non-Custodial Releaselawtoprotectchildrenfrom being abducted. This child release procedure is used by every school in the state to provide guidance on who is authorized to pick up a child.”
When Tedisco stepped up to the podium, he recounted one of the earliest times that he acted to save a missing child in his career.
“One of my accomplishments I’m proud of, if I never do anything again, I got this one thing done,” he started. He continued by recounting when he was a sophomore legislator and still the Chairman of the Taskforce on Missing Children and got a toll ticket as he was traveling on the Thruway. The ticket had a picture reminding people to buckle their seatbelts, and he was hit by an epiphany.
“I almost drove off the road,” he said. “Why can’t we be the first state in the nation to use our transportation system to go from Albany to Syracuse to Rochester to Buffalo on all the Thruway outlets and on those cards put the pictures of missing children, so that maybe someone will recognize them? It only takes one recognition.”
He tried to call the Governor’s office to pitch his idea. “‘There was silence for a long while. ‘Okay Senator, we’ll get back to you.’ Yeah, Governor Mario Cuomo’s going to get back to me. Two hours later: ‘meet the Governor on exit 23, we’re
printing the first tickets and we’re going to start handing them out.’”
As he arrived early in the morning and was waiting, “two big, black SUVs drive up, I said ‘I’m either dead, it’s a mafia attack on me, or this is the Governor of the state of New York.’”
Tedisco said that he asked Cuomo why he had agreed to the idea, and the answer was “Assemblyman, it was the character, content and quality of your ideas, and it’s the right thing to do.”
He ended the story by showing an actual toll ticket with the missing child’s picture, saying “this is the girl on the picture, which two weeks later we found in Buffalo.”
For more information, contact the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s New York branch at 518-812- 6833, or Senator Tedisco at his district office at 518-885-2046 or his Albany office at 518-455-2181.
