Central Nassau Rotary honors local community activists

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The Central Nassau County Rotary Club honored Franklin Square’s Angelo DeVito and West Hempstead’s Patricia Locurcio at the Pompei Restaurant for the annual Rotary Foundation Dinner on May 3. The Rotary Club is a community organization that provides assistance to local projects and nonprofits, including donating to the Hempstead Soup Kitchen and various battered women’s shelter. The Rotary Foundation selected De Vito and Locurcio for their work in helping the West Hempstead Community.
“I was stunned when I heard I was one of the people being honored,” DeVito said. “It was something I never expected.”
DeVito currently serves as the Rotary Club’s second vice president. He said that he joined the group as a way to give back to the community and businesses that served him over the years. DeVito, who owns a landscaping company in West Hempstead, provided landscaping work and bench installations at the West Hempstead Library for no cost. He hopes to expand more of the Rotary Club’s operations into his native Franklin Square.
Locurcio serves as the secretary of the West Hempstead Chamber of Commerce and has also been elected as the new secretary to the West Hempstead Lions Club. Locurcio is a long time activist who founded the Long Island Breakfast Club, which provides counseling and resume-writing services for young professionals. The Nassau Council Chamber of Commerce named her Small Businessperson of the Year — and the West Hempstead Herald also named her Person of the Year — in 2013.
“I’m very involved in this community because it’s where I grew up,” Locurcio said. “I actually used to live a block from here [the Pompei Restaurant].”
Locurcio wants to strengthen and diversify the membership of the West Hempstead Chamber of Commerce in order to keep the local businesses thriving.