Young Vaughan hero helps lost senior find way home

yorkregion.com
Sept. 11, 2014
By Adam Martin-Robbins

These days, when Concetta Valela sees her neighbour’s grandson, Leo Gallo, her face lights up and she showers him with praise.

He’s a bright, affable 11-year-old with an infectious smile and a way of talking that belies his age - but that’s not the reason for her joyful reaction.

It has to do with a chance encounter a couple of months ago between the 71-year-old Alzheimer’s sufferer and the compassionate youth.

On a blistering hot afternoon in late July, Valela left her Woodbridge home, north of Rutherford Road, near Islington Avenue, headed for her daughter’s house, in a subdivision not too far away.

Arriving at her daughter’s place only to discover no one was there, Valela decided to return home, but she became confused and wound up getting lost along the way.

Valela began wandering around the neighbourhood, gradually travelling farther and farther from her house.

Hours later, with the police called in to help find her, Valela crossed paths with Leo, who had his bike and was escorting two of his friends home from a park, up near Major Mackenzie Drive, where they’d been playing.

As she walked past them, Leo recognized her from visits to his grandmother, who lives a few doors down from the Valela’s house.

At that point, he wasn’t sure if she was lost or just out for a walk.

But as Leo rode back toward his house, he passed Valela again and sensed something was amiss.

“I saw her face and she looked so dry and was walking really slow,” he said. “From when I went to go drop my friends off and came back up the street (she) got even slower.”

Although he still wasn’t certain that she needed help, Leo went with his gut.

He got off his bike and asked Valela if she knew where she was going.

When she pointed toward the splash park, in the opposite direction from her home, he asked her to walk with him back to his house, just a couple of blocks away.

“The hardest part really was crossing the street with her,” Leo said. “Lots of cars were impatient...and I kind of had to give them signals to calm down because she was walking slowly.”

After they made it to his house, Leo immediately got her a bottle of water.

“I was going to walk her back (to her house), but I saw her condition - she looked so dry, her face was pale,” he said.

Leo dashed inside to explain the situation to his mother, who immediately grabbed her purse, car keys and daughter then drove Valela home.

“We got to (her) house and saw the police cars and I felt really good because I knew I did a good thing,” Leo said.

Valela’s daughter, Rose Della Penna, thinks what Leo did is pretty impressive.

“I was just so impressed that this young man took it upon himself because he didn’t even know that she had gone missing,” Della Penna said. “He saw her and recognized her. They were both out of their environment (and) he was able to go up to her, as a young man, and say to her are you OK? And brought her home rather than not get involved, which is so common now.”

Valela said, in Italian, that Leo is clearly intelligent and mature for his age - and she loves him for helping her.

For his part, Leo said, he was simply following the sage advice of Brazilian soccer star Neymar, one of his favourite players.