Andrea Rose Teodosio and her mom, Linda, were having a great weekend in Chicago visiting colleges and doing a little shopping when they decided to stop for a pizza. As they headed back to their hotel with a few slices left over, Andrea noticed a homeless man sitting on the side of the road.
What followed is a moment Linda will never forget.
“Andrea said to him, ‘Sir, my mom and I, we’ve been shopping all day and we’ve got all these packages. I just can’t carry this pizza another moment. Do you mind taking it and you might enjoy it so I don’t have to carry it any longer?’” Linda says.
“She was like 16 at the time. To think of a way to give something to this man in a way that allowed him to keep his dignity. To almost turn it around to say, ‘Can you take this off my hands?’ as opposed to, ‘Here, I’m giving you my dinner.’ She was just a very caring person, especially for someone so young.”
Tragically, it was only a few years later, in 2011, when Andrea lost her life in a skiing accident while with friends in West Virginia. The Munroe Falls native was just 22. She was working as a research and strategy development assistant at Hitchcock Fleming & Associates Inc., an Akron-based advertising agency.
“That was her dream job,” Linda says. “She was making her way through that and finding herself as a professional.”
As a way of both dealing with their grief and continuing the work that Andrea no doubt would have thoughtfully and passionately done herself, the Andrea Rose Teodosio Foundation was created. Andrea had a particular fondness for helping the elderly, the underprivileged and children, in addition to environmental issues.
Randie Chermak was one of Andrea’s best friends and a classmate at Walsh Jesuit High School and John Carroll University.
“She was such a great example of what a person should be and what a person should do,” Chermak says. “Whenever I’m struggling, whenever I’m grateful, I always look to Andrea and I know she’s there in every way. She’s here as much now as she was four or five years ago.”
Touching more lives
In November, the foundation got a big boost from M.C. Hair Consultants, a Cuyahoga Falls salon where Chermak serves as marketing leader.
The salon announced that it would donate 10 percent of the proceeds from every gift card sale to the foundation. In addition, a special edition bracelet was made in Andrea’s memory and proceeds go to the foundation.
“We took a very hard look at our business about six months ago,” says Marcy Cona, the salon’s owner. “We said we’re doing a lot of little things. How can we do something that ladders up to something really big and touches the lives of our team, our guests and our community?”
Andrea’s brother Christopher leads the foundation and makes sure the work that is done and the causes the foundation supports are in line with the foundation’s mission, Linda says.
A great example of this alignment is A Rose Project, through which hundreds of girls in foster care or otherwise in need receive dresses, shoes and accessories so they can attend their homecoming or prom in style.
“That is absolutely something we want to support,” Cona says. “So often people think it’s the physical transformation of a haircut or a hair color, but it’s really about going to an event like that. Being able to give someone that gift is amazing.”
The foundation is already making an impact on the community. It has provided raised flowerbeds to Laurel House in Hudson to enable senior citizens to garden from their wheelchairs.
Last July, it sponsored the Fifth Annual Andrea Rose Teodosio Memorial 5K, Walk and Kids Run. There was an art auction that raised $35,000 and there are programs that support the Red Cross and local food banks.
Each event or program is another reminder of the love Andrea brought to the world.
“The thing I always remember most about her is every text she would send me would end with ‘I love you,’” her father Tom says. “Every time we’d get together, Linda would always kid me because Andrea would be going out or she’d be at the house and I’d always give her a hug. Linda would say, ‘Would you let her go?’ Andrea would let me hug her for five minutes and she would never just break away. And she would always end a conversation with, ‘I love you.’ So I’m texting her as she is going down to West Virginia and the last text I got said, ‘I love you, Dad.’” ●
How to reach: Andrea Rose Teodosio Foundation, (330) 630-2243 or www.andrearose.org; M.C. Hair Consultants, (330) 929-2210 or www.mchair.com
