'Smiling Sandy' expressed enthusiasm, love for life

Sunday, February 18, 2007


By CHRISTINA MITCHELL
Courier-Post Staff

Everyone called Sandy DeSantis-Comito "Smiling Sandy."

She signed her name with a happy face. She was as open as a field of fresh snow and just as pure in her enthusiasm for life.

She was a hugger, says her husband of eight years, Tony. And she was a listener, someone who would ask a question of another person and wait earnestly for an answer. Sandy finessed that skill as a longtime addictions counselor with the Step-Up program in Camden County, where she saw possibilities in people who had long given up on themselves.

"With Sandy, it was all about meeting you," says Tony, of Laurel Springs. "It was about learning about you as a person. About asking the simple everyday things . . . . She was very genuine that way."

Joe O'Neill, a senior counselor with Step-Up, saw a dedication in Sandy that sometimes went beyond the call of duty.

"She was very dedicated," he says. "Very compassionate. . . . And she was very patient in counseling alcohol and drug addicts. She was a giver."

"Sandy was all about her family and her clients," adds Kathleen Dobbs, also a Step-Up colleague. That office still has a message from Sandy that says, "I will be on medical leave until further notice."

That leave was for ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, which struck her randomly and suddenly last June and took her life Dec. 30. She was 58.

But Tony likes to emphasize that while his wife had the disease, it did not have her. Last September, the couple shocked their five children by taking a three-week, cross-country train trip. By the time they returned, Sandy had progressed from a walker to wheelchair. Still, she insisted on joining the conga line at her Camden High School reunion in November.

"She was not to be denied," says Tony, who had known Sandy for years before they married, each for the second time.

"She was living with ALS more than she was dying from it."

A fervent belief in God and personal experience with addiction were the major forces in Sandy's life. Combined, they altered lives. At her viewing, says Tony, mourners waited two-and-a-half hours in the rain to tell him Sandy stories.

"Everyone needed to tell me something about meeting her," he recalls. "There were many clients who had 20-year-old stories. . . . One man introduced himself as someone she had "lifted out of the gutter.' And his wife thanked me."

Among the wisdom Sandy imparted to the hopeless and Tony referenced in his eulogy: The good you do truly lives on. Keep believing in what you can't see. Laugh a laugh that's loud and unique and contagious. Use what you've got; it's more than you think.

And smile.

Contact Christina Mitchell at (856) 317-7905 or cmitchell@courierpostonline.com.


send a letter to the editor.