A community-minded multi-tasker honored

For 28-year Inwood resident Patty Vacchio, being named the Inwood Civic Association Citizen of the Year is an honor, but because Vacchio prefers to remain behind the scenes, she’d rather do without all the attention.

Vacchio, a Lawrence High School alumna, dedicates her time to many efforts, including the Inwood Buccaneers youth athletic club and the Inside Inwood website, while balancing three jobs — administrative assistant at Lawrence Woodmere Academy, night and weekend manager at Inwood Financial Services and president of her family business, All Star Engraving.

“I’m a multi-tasker and I’m extremely organized,” she said. “It’s important for me to dedicate myself to the needy, whether it be youth, elderly or the homeless. I have a passion for it.”

Vacchio said that the evolving Inwood neighborhood drives her passion. “It’s changed dramatically as far as the diversity and socio-economically,” she said. “However, that might be what has kept me going. My family and I have learned so much from the diversity, and we’re blessed that we’re all so different.”

Initially a cheerleading advisor for the Inwood Buccaneers in 1992 when her daughter, Tricia, was a cheerleader, Vacchio is now the organization’s vice president. “Participating in the programs we offer is crucial to our times now,” she said. “Many parents have two jobs or are single parents, so we need to supply kids with these programs to keep them off the streets and out of trouble.”

Last February, Vacchio and Inwood residents Peter Sobol, Mike DeRosa and Gary Mertz founded Inside Inwood, a website that provides the community with news, a calendar of events and job listings. The website was the result of a lack of financing to print the Inwood Calendar, which was published from 2005 to 2010. “We’re able to branch out further to people who have moved out of the area but are still interested in the happenings in Inwood,” Vacchio said.

Sobol, who has known Vacchio for 20 years, said, “We’ve worked together for business and in the community in good times and in bad. There is nothing this woman can’t do. She is the most remarkable person I have ever met, and to me she’s not Citizen of the Year, but citizen of the century!”