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Monthly Archives: April 2015

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Jessica Lee Goldyn in a scene from ‘A Chorus Line’ at the Engeman. Photo by Michael DeCristofaro

By Charles J. Morgan

“A Chorus Line” opened at the John W. Engeman Theater in Northport last weekend and was a top-notch terpsichorean treat! If your scribe could marshal more alliterative allusions evoking the theatrical theophany that burst forth last Saturday, he would be demeaning the meaning of accurate critical acumen. But enough of Roccoco doggerel! The show, directed by Drew Humphrey was, well, a smash hit.

Since it was all about dance and nothing but dance, a word about the choreography is in order. Dena DiGiacinto was in charge, and her fully charged crew put out a potpourri of evolutions and contortions in every genre including tango, tap, ballet and culminating in an all-hands-on-stage finale entitled “One,” which brought out a standing ovation rife with shouts of “Bravo!” DiGiacinto is immensely talented, having played a role in it on Broadway. However, she is the one who managed the unbelievable precision, coordination and aesthetic unitive finality that was a tribute to the totality of the show.

Since dance requires music, there was James Olmstead leading his magnificent crew with associate Bob Kelly and featuring Joe Boardman on trumpet, Brent Chiarello on trombone, Russ Brown on bass, Mark Gatz on reeds and Josh Enflich on percussion. In your scribe’s opinion previously expressed about this band, they could easily supplant a Broadway pit outfit including its string section.

The main lead is Zach, the choreographer charged with getting a chorus line in shape for a forthcoming performance. He is played by James Ludwig who reveals not only talent in dancing but a genuine stage presence as an actor. He even appears as a dancer in that knockout finale.

Then we have Jessica Lee Goldyn as Cassie who gives an empty-stage dance  solo in “The Music and the Mirror” as well as an emotional dialog with Zach that can only be described as riveting.

Stephanie Israelson is Valerie. She has two breakaway numbers. In Act I with Andrew Matzger and Sissy Bell called “And…” in which her dancing skills are obvious and in Act II a solo on “”Dance: 10; Looks: 3” in which those skills are more ubiquitous. DJ Petrosino as Al and Rachel Marie Bell as Kristine are hilarious in a number called “Sing.”

In another number entitled “At the Ballet” Kelly Sheehan, Abby Church and Courtney Moran manifested evident skill. Patent progress was also evident in Danny Wilfred’s performance as  Richie.

It should be remembered that every single person on the boards is a dancer. There are no walk-ons, no characters who have only dialog — it is dance and music all the way. Lighting was effected by Cory Pattak who handled the fast-paced action with consummate skill.

There was no set. Even the back wall upstage was seen; after all it was rehearsal and audition time. Laura Shubert on sound design made her  ability to balance, increase/decrease, volume shine through. Your scribe even picked up a brief solo by Josh Endlich played on sizzling high-hats. The beats of all the numbers was so complete that your scribe’s slightly arthritic knee grew tired from his left foot tapping. He actually had to switch to his right.

All in all, the entire performance is sharply and professionally performed, something that the Engeman has consistently presented to theater audiences.

The John W. Engeman Theater, 250 Main St., Northport, will present “A Chorus Line” through May 10. Tickets are $69. For more information, call 261-2900 or visit www.engemean theater.com.

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Scott Powers with his wife Diane at a recent Cancer Research Gala. Photo by Julie Skarratt

By Daniel Dunaief

He spent 20 years looking at the problem in one way. Now, he’s ready for a change and Stony Brook officials stand behind him. After working in genomics at several locations, including for a decade as director of human cancer genomics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to find therapeutic targets for human tumors, Scott Powers recently embraced the opportunity to find better ways to diagnose different types of cancer.

“A major driver for me coming to Stony Brook was to work on earlier detection,” Powers said.

Working with pathology department Chairman Ken Shroyer and Stony Brook obstetrician/gynecologist Michael Pearl, Powers is hoping to develop a prototype test for early detection of ovarian cancer so it can be removed by “simple surgery,” he said.

Powers has worked in numerous ways to isolate or identify mutations that might lead to cancer. That work focused on finding drug targets or developing therapies. One of the many challenges in studying genomics is that some mutations are bystanders, which means they likely don’t have a role in causing cancer or even, necessarily, in enabling cancer to spread. They make it harder to know whether they have a role or are merely different from the range of normal in a genetic sequence.

Some of the ways Powers has understood the potential part mutations play is by taking a computational approach, which can take many forms, including finding gene networks that are frequently altered. This approach has helped find various targets for therapies and improve the classification of tumors.

Powers said the “poster child” for success of this method was the development of the Oncotype DX test for breast cancer, which allows patients with node-negative, ER-positive breast cancer to determine whether they need to take chemotherapy.

He has also compared the gene sequences for similar cancer types across different species. He and Scott Lowe, who is now at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, found this approach could “help identify drivers and, in a sense, help filter out passengers,” he said. This has been successful on a basic science level but hasn’t yet led to the identification of a viable new therapeutic strategy, he said.

Powers’ focus now is to direct his expertise toward developing a test that might address early detection and, in some cases, improved diagnosis.

“It’s a brand new set of things for me to think about,” Powers said. The effort, he believes, should prove reinvigorating. The intellectual challenge of coming up with a solution that improves or enhances someone’s life motivates him.

Powers supports Stony Brook’s effort to add staff and develop a pool of researchers who can develop techniques and tools to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. “I am very hopeful for Stony Brook to build up an intellectually interesting environment that will attract a new generation of cancer scientists to come on board,” he said.

Powers believes cancer is a complex disease that has many different variations. “Many random events occur that sometimes give the cancer cell a competitive survival advantage,” he explained. “Everyone’s tumor has its own unique combination of 10 to 25 genetic alterations that are driving it.”

In addition to working with Shroyer on developing diagnostic tools for the genomics of cancer, Powers has turned his attention toward other researchers on the campus with different backgrounds. He is planning a collaboration with Sasha Levy, who works at the Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology and is an assistant professor of biochemistry and cell biology, to study cancer evolution. He said they’ll be using experimental methods Levy has developed on yeast.

Yusuf Hannun, the director of the Cancer Center, has recruited Powers to participate on the tumor board, which is where physicians from different areas come to discuss specific patients in a multidisciplinary fashion.

“There are numerous discussions and plans to expand upon this growing trend to use genetic testing in developing a personalized strategy for each patient,” Powers said.

Powers and his wife Diane, who works in fundraising with Patricia Wright at Stony Brook in the anthropology department, live in Greenlawn with their daughter Camille, who is a sophomore at Harborfields High School. Their other children are Alexander, 25, who works for a nonprofit in Brooklyn called the Social Science Research Council, and Douglas, 21, who is a junior studying applied math at Harvard.

Powers was looking for two things that he found when he came to Stony Brook: “the chance to develop diagnostic tests” and to “enter new fields by finding new collaborators with scientists doing interesting things.”

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By David Dunaief

Steroids have been in the news with headlines about sports figures like Alex Rodriguez, the NY Yankees baseball player notorious for their illegal use. However, if we look beyond the flashy headlines to rudimentary use, we see that corticosteroids, or steroids, play an important role in medicine. This is a commonly prescribed class of medications. In fact, our bodies make corticosteroids, the indigenous form of steroids, in the cortex of the adrenals, glands that sit on top of the kidneys. Here, we are going to concentrate on the exogenous form, meaning from the outside as medication.

The use or benefit
Steroids have an anti-inflammatory effect. This is critical since many acute and chronic diseases are based at least partially on inflammation. Chronic diseases that benefit include allergic, inflammatory and immunological diseases (1). These types of diseases touch on almost every area of the body from osteoarthritis and  autoimmune diseases — rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, lupus, psoriasis and eczema — to asthma, COPD (emphysema and chronic bronchitis) and eye disorders. This type of medication is pervasive.

The delivery
Steroids are delivered via the oral route, as topical creams, lotions and eye drops or via injections, intravenous solutions and inhaled formulations. The most commonly known medication is prednisone, but there is a plethora of others, including prednisolone, methylprednisolone, cortisone, hydrocortisone and dexamethasone.
Their benefits can be tremendous, improving functionality and reducing pain or improving breathing. You could say they are lifesaving in some instances, and with rescue inhalers they may just be that.

The bad
However, there is a very big caveat: they come at a price. Steroids have lots and lots of adverse events associated with them. This is where the bad part comes in and keeps on coming. Steroids cause weight gain, increased glucose (sugars), high blood pressure, cardiovascular events, osteoporosis, change in mood (psychoses), cataracts, glaucoma, infection, peptic ulcers, Cushing’s syndrome and the list goes on. Ironically, steroids help with breathing; however, as I’ve seen in my clinical experience, they can cause shortness of breath when weaned from a longer-use high dose too quickly.

The upshot
The good news is that a plant-based diet may have similar beneficial effects in chronic diseases as steroids without all the downsides. Let’s look at the evidence.

The role in pneumonia
Pneumonia is among the top-10 leading causes of death in the world (2). It can be a most painful and debilitating disease. I know, for I experienced it personally while I was in my medical training. Every time I coughed, it felt like there was a fire in my chest.
In a meta-analysis (a group of nine studies), there was no overall effect of corticosteroids in reducing the risk of mortality in community-acquired pneumonia (3). However, don’t fret; when the data was broken into subsets, the findings were different. In subset data of those who had severe pneumonia, there was a statistically significant 74 percent reduction in mortality. And when duration was the main focus in subgroup analysis, those who received prolonged use of steroids reduced their risk of mortality by half. Unfortunately, with the benefit comes an increased risk of adverse events, and this meta-analysis was no exception. There was a greater than two times increased risk of abnormally high glucose levels with prolonged use. Thus, when giving steroids, especially for a prolonged use, it may be wise to check glucose levels.
In a more recent randomized controlled trial (RCT), the gold standard of studies, the results reinforced the beneficial effects of steroids on pneumonia. They showed that in those with both severe pneumonia and high inflammation, there was a two-thirds reduction in treatment failures when corticosteroids were added to the regimen (4). There were 120 patients involved in the study. They received antibiotics plus either methylprednisolone or placebo for five days.

Osteoarthritis: surprising results
As we know, osteoarthritis specifically of the knee is very common, especially as the population continues to age. Intra-articular (in the joint) injections directly into the knee are becoming routine treatment. A recent study compared injectable hyaluronic acid to injectable corticosteroid (5). The results showed that over three months, the corticosteroid was superior to hyaluronic acid in terms of reducing pain, 66 percent versus 43.8 percent, respectively. Interestingly, over the longer term, 12 months, hyaluronic acid reduced the pain and maintained its effect significantly longer than the steroid, 33 percent versus a meager 8.2 percent, respectively. Study groups received five injections of either steroid or of hyaluronic acid directly to the knee over a five-week period. Thus, steroids may not always be the most effective choice when it comes to pain reduction. Hyaluronic acid may have caused this beneficial effect by reducing inflammation, protecting cartilage and preventing cell death, according to the authors.

COPD: length may not matter
It is not unusual to treat COPD patients with oral steroids. But what is the proper duration? The treatment paradigm has been two weeks with 40 mg of corticosteroids daily. However, results in an RCT showed that five days with 40 mg of corticosteroid was noninferior (equivalent) to 14 days of the same dosage and frequency (6). About one-third of patients in each group experienced a COPD exacerbation within the six-month duration of the trial. The hope is that the shorter use of steroids will mean fewer side effects. There were over 600 patients in this trial. We have come a long way; prior to 1999, eight weeks of steroids was a more commonplace approach to treating acute COPD exacerbations.

Topical steroid risk
Even topical creams and lotions are not immune to risk. For example, potent topical creams and lotions placed around the orbit of the eye with prolonged use may negatively affect vision (7). However, the evidence is based mostly on case reporting, which is a low level of evidence.

Dietary effect
One of the great things about steroids is that they reduce inflammation, and we know that the basis of greater than 80 percent of chronic disease is inflammation. A plant-based diet involving lots of vegetables and fruits and some grains may have a similar effect as steroids. The effect of diet on chronic disease may be to modify the immune system and reduce inflammation (8). The bioactive substances from plants thought to be involved in this process are predominantly the carotenoids and the flavonoids. Thus, those patients who respond even minimally to steroids are likely to respond to a plant-based diet in much the same beneficial way without the downsides of a significant number of side effects. Diet, unlike steroids, can be used for a long duration and a high intake, with a direct relationship to improving disease outcomes.
In conclusion, it is always better to treat with the lowest effective dose for the shortest effective period when it comes to steroids. The complications of these drugs are enumerable and must always be weighed against the benefits. Sometimes, other drugs may have more beneficial effects over the long term such as hyaluronic acid injections for knee osteoarthritis. A plant-based diet, with anti-inflammatory properties similar to steroids, may be a useful alternative for chronic disease or may be used alongside these drugs, possibly reducing their dosage and duration.

REFERENCES
(1) uptodate.com. (2) N Engl J Med. 1995;333(24):1618-24. (3) PLoS One. 2012;7(10):e47926. (4) JAMA. 2015;313(7):677-686. (5) Open Access Rheum 2015;7:9-18. (6) JAMA. 2013;309(21):2223-31. (7) Australas J Dermatol. Mar 5, 2015. (8) Int J Vitam Nutr Res. 2008 Dec;78(6):293-8.

Dr. Dunaief is a speaker, author and local lifestyle medicine physician focusing on the integration of medicine, nutrition, fitness and stress management.  For further information, go to the website www.medicalcompassmd.com and/or consult your personal physician.

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By Michael R. Sceiford

If you are interested in saving for retirement, here’s some good news: For 2015, the IRS has raised the maximum contribution limits for 401(k) plans from $17,500 to $18,000. And if you’re 50 or older, you can put in an extra $6,000, up from $5,500 in 2014.

These same limits also apply to 403(b) plans, for employees of public schools and nonprofit organizations, and to 457(b) plans, for employees of state and local governments and other governmental agencies, such as park boards and water districts. So, in other words, a lot of workers have gotten a “raise” in their ability to contribute to tax-advantaged retirement plans.

Although you may not think you will ever contribute the maximum amount to your retirement plan, you may still benefit from making small increases each year. Unfortunately, many people don’t do this. In fact, approximately 30 percent of eligible workers don’t even participate in their employer’s 401(k)-type plan, according to the Employee Benefits Security Administration, an agency of the U.S. Department of Labor. And the median savings rate for these plans is just 6 percent of eligible income, with only 22 percent of employees contributing more than 10 percent of their pay, according to a recent report by Vanguard, an investment management company.

In any case, you do have some pretty strong motivations to put in as much as you can possibly afford. First of all, your 401(k) earnings grow on a tax-deferred basis, which means your money has more growth potential than it would if it were placed in an account on which you paid taxes every year. Eventually, though, you will be taxed on your withdrawals, but by the time you start taking out money, presumably in retirement, you might be in a lower tax bracket.

But you can also get a more immediate tax-related benefit from contributing as much as you can to your 401(k). Consider this hypothetical example. Suppose that you are in the 28 percent tax bracket. For every dollar you earn, you must pay 28 cents in taxes (excluding state and other taxes), leaving you 72 cents to spend as you choose. But if you put that same dollar into your 401(k), which is typically funded with pre-tax dollars, you will reduce your taxable income by one dollar — which means that if you did contribute the full $18,000, you’d save $5,040 in federal income taxes. Your particular tax situation will likely be impacted by other factors, but you’d have that $18,000 working for you in whatever investments you have chosen within your 401(k) plan. If you kept contributing the maximum each year, you will be giving yourself more potential for a sizable fund for your retirement years.

Even if you couldn’t afford to “max out” on your 401(k), you should, at the very least, contribute enough to earn your employer’s match, if one is offered. (A common match is 50 cents per dollar, up to 6 percent of your pay.) Your human resources department can tell you how much you need to contribute to get the greatest match, so if you haven’t had that conversation yet, don’t put it off.

As we’ve seen, investing in your 401(k) is a good retirement strategy — you get tax benefits and the chance to build retirement savings. And with the contribution limit increasing, you’ve got the chance for more savings in the future.

This article was written for use by local Edward Jones Financial Advisor Michael R. Sceiford.

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File photo by Erika Karp

Just a few hours before the New York State Legislature approved the state’s 2015-16 budget, which includes a number of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s education reform initiatives, school districts across the North Shore finally got to know how much aid they’ll receive next year.

The state aid runs showed districts getting more than they expected, since many budgeted around a 1.7 percent increase. Earlier this year, Cuomo (D) announced state aid would only increase by $377 million — a 1.7 percent increase from this year — if his state education reforms didn’t pass the Legislature.

And while not all of the initiatives passed, a few did, so the aid increased by about $1.4 billion statewide.

“This is a plan that keeps spending under 2 percent, reforms New York’s education bureaucracy, implements the nation’s strongest and most comprehensive disclosure laws for public officials and makes the largest investment in the upstate economy in a generation,” Cuomo said in a statement.

But not all were convinced the education initiatives would reform public schools.

The Education Transformation Act of 2015 amends the teacher evaluation system, changes the time to gain tenure from three to four years and creates two designations for failing schools. The hot-button item, though, was the teacher evaluation system.

Under the act, the State Education Department will develop a new teacher evaluation system by June 30, which school districts will then have to locally negotiate and enact by Nov. 15 in order to receive their allotted aid. The system also includes a component based on students’ performance on the state’s common core-aligned tests. The evaluation system was last changed in 2013.

In a phone interview on Wednesday morning, Middle Country Central School District Superintendent Roberta Gerold, who is also president of the Suffolk County School Superintendents Association, said she believed the change to the system was misguided, and wished elected officials would have learned that “rushing into a system that doesn’t have details attached” — as was the case in 2013 — doesn’t work.

Some Assembly members said they shared Gerold’s concerns.

Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-Setauket) voted against the Education, Labor and Family Assistance State budget bill, which Cuomo issued on Tuesday with a message of necessity. When asked about the reforms, Englebright immediately interjected, “they are not reforms,” he said.

He said he voted against the measure because it was unclear as to how it would impact students.

“[It] doesn’t mean we can’t make improvements, but those improvements need to make sense,” he said.

Englebright strayed from his fellow party members by voting against the bill, which he said was a difficult decision.

“The people who sent me [to Albany] are the ones who I finally had to vote in accordance with,” he said.

Assemblyman Andy Raia (R-East Northport) said in a press release the education measure “takes away local control and is downright insulting to principals, administrators and teachers.”

While most North Shore Assembly officials voted down the education component, Mike Fitzpatrick (R- St. James) voted yes. In a phone interview Wednesday, Fitzpatrick said he stood by his decision.

He said he believed the reforms would bring more accountability to the system, which needed to be reformed. Fitzpatrick also said the amendments take away some of the New York State United Teachers union’s power. The union referred to the changes as a disgrace and the evaluation system as a sham.

“Good teachers, and they know who they are, they don’t have anything to worry about,” Fitzpatrick said.

Rohma Abbas contributed reporting.

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By Leah Dunaief

Almost 20 years ago this Easter, I left the comforts of home to go on a tour 10,000 miles away. The adventure was originally billed as a trip to Australia and New Zealand, but the tour company representative called to tell me about a month in advance that New Zealand was going to be eliminated from the itinerary to shorten the trip — and we would just visit Australia. I was terrifically disappointed and made my feelings known. After all, how often did I plan to be in the neighborhood? As long as I was making that long flight, I was intent on touring both countries.

Since I knew the tour owner personally, I carried on about my disappointment long and hard. Finally he called with a proposal. While the official visit was now only to Australia, there was a small group of six people, whom he knew well, who were indeed going on their own tour of New Zealand. One of their group had been stationed there during World War II and had put together a pre-tour visit. At my friend’s suggestion, they were now prepared to include me. Did I want to go with them?

“Would I be like a seventh wheel,” I asked. “No,” he assured me, “they would really like you to join them.” “Did they all know each other beforehand,” I worried. “Yes, the three couples were quite good friends,” he explained, “and lots of fun.” I worried more. “Here, take their phone numbers and call them — you can decide for yourself,” he said as he ended the call, glad to have finally solved the problem.

I did call one of them, a hasty call because she was running between two appointments, but she did encourage me to come. They were leaving from three different corners of the United States: Seattle, Los Angeles and Sarasota. So I agreed to meet them on the South Island in Christchurch, the second largest city of New Zealand, in a specific hotel lobby on Easter Sunday at 7 a.m. I can only marvel today at my daring.
The drama intensified.

Before I got on the plane to begin my trip, I came down with a nasty cold. By the time I got to Auckland, New Zealand’s gateway city on the North Island at 6 a.m. I had a temperature of 102 degrees and felt rotten. Fortunately I had included a Z-Pak antibiotic in my luggage, and I swallowed down the first dose on the bus to the motel. That bus ride went on forever, seeming to stop at every corner. When I finally arrived at the motel and got into bed, one thought occurred to me: Everyone in the world who cared about me enough to take care of me was on the other side of the world. With that, I drifted off to sleep.

When I awoke in the afternoon and wandered outside, looking for a place to eat, I was surprised to find all stores tightly closed and the streets almost empty Finally catching up to a pedestrian, I asked why.

“Everything is closed on Good Friday!” he exclaimed, looking at me as if I had just dropped down from Mars. Which indeed is how I felt. “Only the tourist shops and the movies are open today,” he added, sensing that I needed further help.

I took a bus to the center of the city and chatted up the bored clerks in all the tourist shops I could find. Auckland, a clean and beautiful city on the water, felt the size of Boston. Then, when the tourist places closed, I found the city’s equivalent of Times Square and went to see “The English Patient.” There weren’t many people in the cinema, and those few didn’t hear all the dialogue because by that time, I was coughing very hard. But it was a gorgeously filmed movie, even if I didn’t understand the plot entirely, which I attributed to my illness.

The next day I flew to Christchurch, a city that could have been located in rural England, and at the appointed hour on Easter morning I met my six traveling companions, who looked a little nervous too. Fortunately we hit it off, had a fabulous trip through the South Island, from glaciers to beaches, saw about 60 million sheep and have been friends ever since. It was a Happy Easter memory and I wish you one this year too.

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By Daniel Dunaief

I have a modest proposal: How about a new holiday, either in each school or in each town, every year? I’m not talking about taking any more time off from school or interrupting the flow of work, especially in a year when snow, ice and record-breaking blizzards that never happened upset our busy schedules. I’d like to suggest, rather, that we celebrate, recognize or mark the occasion for a different moment every year. We could create such a holiday some day in June, when classes are winding down and we’re just about to kick off the start of the summer.

Every year, Americans stop to recognize 9/11 in September. It’s a somber occasion and a chance to reflect on who we lost and what might have been. It’s also an opportunity to recognize the unimaginable bravery of those who did whatever they could to save strangers, friends and fellow New Yorkers and Americans.

Perhaps, one year, we might also recognize all the medical miracles that have made lives possible. I’ll never forget the day a colleague of mine at Bloomberg picked up the phone and his face went white. Seemingly unable to verbalize the terror in his mind, he grabbed his jacket and sprinted out of the room. His sudden and panicked motion created considerable concern from his colleagues.

As he told our editor the next morning in a barely audible voicemail, his wife went into premature labor and, less than an hour later, delivered a baby girl who weighed close to 1 pound.

For weeks, whenever he came to work, he seemed to look past us, searching for any kind of help, spiritual or otherwise, for his daughter’s fragile life. After several months, she grew enough to improve her prospects for survival. We knew things were getting better because we heard the welcome return of laughter from our friend. We also saw him exhale for the first time in months, loosening and relaxing the taut muscles in his chest.

Perhaps, one school might find the names of the doctors and scientists who improved the treatment and care for premature babies who had considerably poorer prognoses 50 or 100 years earlier.

We might also pause to recognize those working in fertility clinics or in reproductive research, who have made it possible for couples having trouble conceiving to celebrate the marvel of their child.

Maybe we could celebrate the considerable achievements of scientists who have helped prevent an HIV diagnosis from becoming a death sentence. When Magic Johnson revealed that he was HIV positive, many of us probably never imagined we’d see him cheering for his Michigan State basketball team to make it to the Final Four in 2015.

It is through remarkable medical breakthroughs, incredible dedication and a desire to defeat diseases like cancer and AIDS that we can extend the quantity and quality of our lives and the lives of our friends and family.

Some of these achievements and lifesaving discoveries wouldn’t have been possible without the insights and inspiration of scientists, researchers and doctors on Long Island.

Perhaps we can take a moment to appreciate and acknowledge the guiding hand and valuable contributions religious leaders make to us. Bringing us together and encouraging us through our battles elevates us when we’re down.

We see headlines about people who take lives and make poor decisions. Perhaps, we could use a day to recognize those who, to borrow a phrase from just about every political ad, truly “fight for us.” And maybe, by acknowledging these achievements, we inspire the next generation.

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File photo

Police say two people charged with a hate crime on Monday afternoon targeted elderly people, pretending to collect donations for a church before committing burglary.

According to the Suffolk County Police Department, officers from the 2nd Precinct responded to a 911 call about the suspects posing as church representatives to gain access to an elderly woman’s apartment in Paumanack Village in Greenlawn, then stealing property from her.

Police officers Frank Muoio and Todd Regan found suspects Heather Marchese, 23, and Sean DiStefano, a 24-year-old Shoreham resident, within the apartment complex and arrested them. Both were charged with second-degree burglary as a hate crime. Marchese, who is homeless, was also charged with seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and possession of a hypodermic instrument.

Marchese and DiStefano, who both had other unrelated charges already pending against them, including criminal possession and traffic law violations, were listed on the New York State court system’s online database as representing themselves and could not be reached for comment.

Police said an investigation — by 2nd Squad detectives and the Hate Crimes Unit — has indicated that there may be other victims, and that the suspects targeted the elderly.

Anyone who may have been a target in the scheme is asked to call the Hate Crimes Unit at 631-852-6323.

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Frederick McGhee photo from the SCPD

Update: Police reported late Wednesday afternoon that Frederick McGhee, who went missing from his home in St. James, has been located and is unharmed.

A St. James man with memory loss has gone missing from his home, authorities said Wednesday morning.

The Suffolk County Police Department issued a Silver Alert for 89-year-old Frederick McGhee, a resident of Bentley Court, hours after he disappeared in his gray 2003 Toyota Camry, with New York license plate AVH 8442, at 2:30 a.m. Police said he may have been wearing a royal blue jacket and a black hat at the time.

McGhee was described as white, about 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighing 145 pounds. He has blue eyes and white hair.

Anyone with information about McGhee’s location is asked to call 911, or the SCPD’s 4th Squad at 631-854-8452.

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