Heavyweight - #62 Stefano

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

On her flight to emigrate from Italy in 1959, Anita was tasked with babysitting a two-year-old boy being brought to the US for adoption. During the flight, Anita fell in love with the child, and for the rest of her life, she wondered what became of him. Get ad-free episodes of Heavyweight by subscribing to Pushkin+ on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm. You'll also get an exclusive bonus episode where Jonathan, Stevie, and Kalila remember how the beloved Jackie calls came to be and share a never-before-aired opening that could have started the show in an alternate Heavyweight universe. Thanks for your support—and be sure to check out the other offerings available to Pushkin+ subscribers, including ad-free episodes, full audiobooks, and exclusive binges of other podcasts throughout the year. Subscribe on Apple: apple.co/pushkinSubscribe on Pushkin: pushkin.com/plusSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin Pushkin Hi, Toni. Karen. Just in the grocery store. I'm sorry to be intruding like this, you know, just calling up at a... Oh, hi.

Oh, hi. Sorry, my mom called on the other line. So then you just drop whoever you're talking to? That's the kind of daughter I am. Not very professional, but okay. Oh, is this a business call? Yes, it actually is. Okay.

Well, because, you know, you're a dear friend of Jackie, so I thought maybe, you know, I would turn to you with my concern. I've been trying to call Jackie, and she doesn't seem to be accepting my phone calls. Yeah, no, I could confirm that she's okay. Okay. Oh, that's good. Thank God.

Yeah, I could confirm that. And I can confirm that she's annoyed by your persistence that I could confirm. Okay. And it's, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. Maybe she just feels that you're using her. Well, I am. Well, maybe she doesn't like that.

Yeah, because she wants to be the user, right? That's an excellent point. you've got there. Okay, Jackie, if you're out there listening, which, let's face it, you're probably not. If I am using you, it's on behalf of America and Canada. Of course. From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is heavyweight. Today's episode, Stefano.

Right after the break. This is an I-Heart podcast. Are you looking for ways to make your everyday life happier, healthier, more productive and more creative? I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one best-selling author of the Happiness Project, bringing you fresh insights and practical solutions in the happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. My co-host and Happiness Gini Pig is my sister, Elizabeth Craft. That's me, Elizabeth Craft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore ideas and hacks about cultivating happiness and good habits. Check out Happier with Gretchen Rubin from Lemonada Media.

It's impossible to talk to Debbie without hearing stories about her mom, Anita. Anita was Italian, and in every story, it's her Atomismo-Feresemo-Fer. Roche, or fierce optimism, that takes center stage. Truly, for her, the glass was beyond half full. It was always full. Even if there was a drop of water in there, Jonathan, it was just always full. As an example, Debbie tells the story of how Anita comforted some cousins who were concerned their child was crying too much.

And my mom said, no, you don't have to worry. She's like me. I was like that for years. I was always crying very easily. My mom was around 78 years old at the time. And they said, did you grow out of it? And my mom goes, yeah. And they said, when?

And she said about two years ago. So, you know, they had something to hope for. Anita died in 2020, and her death was hard on Debbie. She misses her mom a lot and thinks about her a lot. And perhaps because of this, she finds herself returning to the one Anita story that has yet to find its happy ending. And that is the story of the airplane and the baby.

Anita grew up in a part of Italy called Eistria, and after World War II, the region was seated to Yugoslavia. Suddenly, her family was under oppressive socialist rule. So Anita and her brother hatched an escape plan. They double-layered their clothing, borrowed a motorboat, and sailed into the Adriatic Sea. Anita could easily have drowned. But my mom said, you know, you're young

and you don't think about that kind of stuff. You just think about freedom. Anita and her brother made it to Italy, where the police took them to a refugee camp. In the coming years, Anita would live in several such camps. When I would talk to her other friends about it, her friends would say, oh, it was hard. You know, the food wasn't good most of the time,

and we didn't have money. But you would never have known that. talking to her. She was just eternally optimistic. She said, it was wonderful. They opened the doors and I saw so many people that I knew there. We'd play cards and we'd drink and, you know, the girls would do each other's hair and just had fun. In 1959, Anita got her chance to leave the camps, a visa to the United States. And so, all alone, Anita set out to America. So she was getting ready to get on the flight from Rome to New York, and there was an adoption agency that were taking children from orphanages from Italy to the United States. And they asked my mom if she would babysit this little boy,

this little two-year-old boy. And she said, of course. Did she learn his name? Stefano. It's Anita, and you have a... I got picture. of a little baby, Stefano. This is Anita, in a video Debbie filmed a year before her mom's death. In the video, Anita is clutching a photograph taken during the flight. It's so cute. Look at how beautiful he is, Stephanie. The photograph is oddly composed, almost like it was taken by accident when the camera was

set down. Anita and Stefano's faces are both partially cut off, but you can tell that Anita is smiling big with the two-year-old Stefano peaceful in her arms. How old were you there? 24. Look at how beautiful. 60 years ago. 1959.

It was a long flight to New York, and they had to stop three times to refuel. So for 18 hours, Anita held Stefano close. I think she just fell in love with him. She just fell in love with that little baby. She said he was the best baby you could ever see. How good baby he was. He was the best baby.

I was very happy. I was happy. A little baby was happy. It was Anita's first. time on an airplane and Stephanos too, they were both leaving behind everyone they knew and setting out alone for a new life in America. Clutching this baby over the ocean, the two of them smiling at each other. Anita and Stefano bonded. They were both off to what she hoped was a better life. They get to New York. She was holding the baby. And the age, and the age,

The agency came up to her and then just took him right out of her arms. She said they didn't say anything to her. They just take him away from me. And he started crying because he don't know nobody. There was no chance to even say goodbye. And I was crying with him. I would cry now. Yeah.

Of course, that's sad. He was like my baby. She would cry. She would cry when she'd talk about it. Even after raising two kids of her own, Anita never stopped talking about the child who was hers for a day. All through her life, even into her last years, everyone heard about Stefano. Anita continued to hope, always needed to believe that Stefano's life was a good one. She would say, I wonder where he is. Was he in a good home? What was his life like?

I would like to know him and see how he's doing. I'm sorry. Maybe you're far away. I don't know where. Where are you? I was thinking all this year about him all the time. Yeah. And I love you, even if I don't see you too long. That's a nice story. I don't know if you understand that. I think so.

Back when Anita was still alive, there were several attempts at finding Stefano. Anita sought out help from various friends and family, but no one was able to get anywhere. They even looked into a TV show that reunited adoptees with their birth parents, but Anita wasn't Stefano's birth parent. But then one day, Debbie brought up the subject of Stefano with her close friend, Lindsay. Lindsay starts plugging stuff into the computer and she said, oh, I found him.

Hang on. But you didn't, did you even have his last name? No. And who's this Lindsay? Does she work for the State Department or something? You would think. As someone who makes his living tracking people down like a nice version of Dog the Bounty Hunter, a dog the bounty hunter who, rather than drag, dragging people off to jail, drags them off to heal.

I'm professionally piqued by this Lindsay. I have a skill for finding digital footprints of people. This is Lindsay. I'm the person that people go to if they want to know something. The only information she knew about Stefano was his age and the date of the flight. But with that, she found Stefano's immigration record, which had the needs. name of the man on it who was set to adopt him. From there, Lindsay found the adoptive father's obituary. Under the list of surviving children, there was the name Stephen. And we put that

together as Stefano. In America, Stefano became Stephen. Although Lindsay now had Stefano's full name, she had no way of getting in touch with him. She combed social media, but he was nowhere to be found. She did find his two brothers, though, so she messaged one. He said that it was a very nice story, but he doesn't speak to Stephen anymore. Yeah. And when Lindsay tried the other brother, it was basically the same thing that they don't speak either. And then Lindsay dug a little deeper, and it looked like he might have a criminal record. Debbie and Lindsay couldn't see what Stephen's criminal record was.

It just came up as a flag on one of those people-finding websites. But the reality of what they were doing suddenly sank in. They were looking for a potentially dangerous stranger to introduce to the elderly Anita. And it gave them pause. That paired with, and I'm not speaking to his brothers, we weren't there if maybe this was our safest way to go about this, and we wanted to take some time to kind of figure out a game plan.

But time passed and no game plan emerged. And a year later, Anita died, never having gotten to reunite with Stefano. After the loss of a parent, there's often an attempt to honor a final wish, donating to a beloved cause or scattering ashes in a favorite place. But Debbie feels a need to fulfill a different kind of wish. On her mother's behalf, she wants to know that Stefano is okay. Anita's death was very, very, very difficult. And I think it's healing for Debbie if we find him. And I think that she needs this more than she thinks she does.

Lindsay says Debbie never got the chance to fully grieve Anita. After she died, COVID hit. Then her father developed dementia. And Debbie became his full-time caretaker. Then her father died. Just always on to this next draining thing, you know. And since it is honoring this wish of her mom, it's helping her feel. And I can just see that when we talk about the story.

She's so hopeful and she's so determined. And this is something that I haven't seen with Debbie in a very long time. And for Debbie, she hopes this story might mean something to Stefano, too. Maybe he needs to know that this woman thought of him for most of him, for most, of his life, loving him from a distance, wondering about him, praying for him. I mean, what a thing to know. After the break, let's find him. Let's find that guy, that little Stefano. Are you looking for ways to make your everyday life happier, healthier, more productive and more creative?

I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one bestselling author of The Happiness Project, bringing you fresh insights and practical solutions in the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. My co-host and happiness guinea pig is my sister, Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Craft, a TV writer and producer. producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore ideas and hacks about cultivating happiness and good habits. Check out Happier with Gretchen Rubin from Lemonada Media. So, so, here we are. Here we are. My producer Kalila Holt and I gather in the studio. Our mission is twofold. We want to find a way to contact Stephen, but before we do, we want to figure out what Stephen's mysterious criminal record actually is. Kalila starts tip-tapping away on her computer while I settle in and offer the kind

of input that only an investigative journalist with a decades-long track record can. I've gone through different phases in my life where a V-neck was more appealing than a crew neck. It's always darkest before the dawn. Is that true? I was like to Augie, I was like, smell how good that is. And he was like, that smells disgusting. I could think of other times when it's darker. It's probably darker at My gal don't do much talking dances, even when she's walking one and two. Oh, look at that little squirrel. Oh, here's criminal traffic. And then, finally, we find the record we've been looking for.

D-U-I. Oh, okay. In 1989. That was a long time ago. So there's really no other criminal past except to... That's all I'm seeing. Boy, that's sad that that was enough to kind of make them drop the whole thing. Yeah.

Please leave your message for five... Kalila digs up some possible phone numbers for Stephen online. And in the weeks to come, I leave numerous voicemails. Hi there. I'm looking for a Stephen. I call so many numbers, I hear automated messages entirely new to me. The number is in service. Is in service? Try your call again.

None of these phone numbers lead me to Stephen. They just lead me to different robotic voices. You're cocking up. All right. That's it? Yeah. With the telephone having crapped on our heads, we decide that what we need is an even older form of communication.

The U.S. Postal Service. Kalila uncovers three possible mailing addresses for Stephen. So we write three letters and drop them in the mailbox, letting them fly off into the world like three hopeful birds. And then time, as is its want, passes. Two years go by. Two years. It's unlikely the average podcast listener's brain,

raised on podcasts about celebs, elk steak, and the science of why people go to the bathroom, can easily conceptualize the passage of so much time. If this was a video podcast, I'd stare into the camera with my patent, deadpan affect as my beard and fingernails grew in time lapse. But since it isn't a video podcast, I present to you an audiophonic aid. That was only 10 seconds.

Now imagine two years. Two years of refreshing my age. inbox and calling my answering service to no avail. And then, Debbie and I check back in. Where are you right now? It appears that you have a ladder behind you. Yes, I'm at home. And where does this ladder lead to? Oh, nowhere. It's just a ladder to nowhere. We're going nowhere with this ladder. I hope we're going somewhere with this story. I hope we're not on a ladder to nowhere. It seems Debbie hasn't given up on Stefano. She tells me Lindsay found some of the same phone numbers we did. So Debbie, too, tried calling and leaving messages. No one ever called back,

though. Still, Debbie wants to keep trying. And so more letters are sent, more voicemails left, and two more months go by. I've completely given up hope. And then, one afternoon, I finally hear from Stephen. You did. I did. You did? Wow. Yeah. I'm shocked. I wasn't holding out a lot of hope. Me either. I tell Debbie about the phone call, how Stephen told me he dismissed my letters as a scam. I asked if he'd be open to a conversation with Debbie,

but he said he doesn't have transportation. And when I said we could do a video call, he said he hasn't a cell phone nor a computer, and he, quote, doesn't follow the internet. But eventually, he said he'd be okay with a telephone call. I would love that. I think it's a gift. that he doesn't realize, you know?

So he is available, one o'clock green mountain time. So that would be like, oh, sorry, mountain time, mountain time, not green mountain time. After the break, Stefano at long last. Is Green Mountain Time a thing? Sounds like a coffee thing. That would be a three o'clock Ness Cafe. So one o'clock Green Mountain. Are you looking for ways to make your everyday life happier, healthier, more productive and more creative?

I'm Gretchen Rubin, the number one bestselling author of The Happiness Project, bringing you fresh insights and practical solutions in the Happier with Gretchen Rubin podcast. My co-host and happiness guinea pig is my sister, Elizabeth Kraft. That's me, Elizabeth Craft, a TV writer and producer in Hollywood. Join us as we explore ideas and hacks about cultivating happiness and good habits. Check out Happier with Gretchen Rubin from Lemonada Media. The next day at 1 p.m. Green Mountain Time, Debbie and I convene. Okay, I'll give them a call. I'll phone him, and I'll introduce you guys. Okay.

Okay. Hello. Hello, Stephen. Yes. Hi, it's Jonathan phoning. I'm here with Debbie. Oh, you are. Hi, Stephen.

How are you? I'm fine. How are you? I'm good. I'm really good, and I'm really excited to hear your voice and to know that you're here right now. So, Stephen, my mom, her name was Anita. Debbie lays it all out for Stephen, the plane ride, the love Anita felt for him, and how that love endured for Anita's entire life.

You were always on her mind for many, many years and told many people about you. Well, God bless your mom. I wish she would have adopted me. I think she would have liked that, too. Anita always wanted to know whether after being taken from her arms, Stefano's life had been a good one. So we start at the beginning with Stephen's adoption. My foster parents told me roughly at the age of eight.

You call them your foster parents. Did they adopt you? Yes. Were they good people? I mean, there was three squares. A day, I mean, there was no abuse or anything like that. I don't mind. Lickens is what my dad called it.

Did you say Lickens? Yeah. About, it wasn't abuse. It was just for disappointing purposes. Was that rough? Well, for a little kid it is. Did you, but did you feel loved? Yes, I did.

Oh, I remember from childhood other than friends, and they turned out to be drug addicts. I turned out nominal. What do you mean when you say nominal? Well, I have a serious alcohol problem. Okay. I know I sound like I've been drinking, but I haven't. I don't have anything here.

I was pretty much known as a boozer. Back in the day, Stephen says, the drinking got bad, which led to the DUI. You don't think when you drink, You get behind the wheel of a vehicle, drunk, is preposterous. Did your father, did your adoptive father do something similar? He drank, but not in excess. I never saw him on a drunken stupor. Well, nobody's ever seen me.

I won't let them. Yeah. So you drink alone? Yes. That song by that one guy, George Thurgood, I Drink Alone, reminds me of me. As the conversation goes on, Debbie grows increasingly quiet, so I do my best to draw Stephen out. Did you, did you get married? No, I've never been married. I've had relationships, but they come and go. Would you say that you've been in love?

I've been infatuated, put it out. And I live with a lady for many years, but that was back in the 80s. What can you say about her? Joanne? She died of lung cancer. And I lived with her for like nine years. Oh, boy.

Did she pass away while you were living together? Yeah. Oh, that must have been hard. Yeah, I was, but I moved on. Stephen tells us that he was the Navy for four years, that he missed Vietnam by just a month. Most of his professional life was spent working in factories. I ask him about his brothers, why they no longer speak, but he says nothing in particular happened. They just drifted. Overall, he says, his life has been

nominal and fortunate. When I ask how so, he cites the fact that he's never been homeless, although there was a brief period in 2014 when he ended up in a veteran shelter. It was fine, he says, except for the fact that he couldn't control the heat or the air conditioning. And shortly after that, he moved into a room in his friend Carl's house, which is where he is now. I took a video of her telling the story. I don't know if you're interested in hearing it. Debbie wants Stephen to hear what he meant to Anita in Anita's own words. In response, Stephen says that he doesn't have access to a car right now. Plus, he's sick in bed.

I assume he thinks we're asking him to go somewhere, so I try again to explain. We could try to play a little bit of the video over the phone so that you can hear Anita's voice. Not right now. I'm good. It's no misunderstanding. Stephen doesn't want to hear Anita. Still, Debbie tries to explain her mom's feelings for the baby she held during that flight to America. I think in some ways she felt, like, sympathical with you, you know, like sympathetic with you,

that you were both leaving your homeland. I mean, is it strange to think that as a baby you were able to have such a strong effect on somebody? Well, I don't think of it as that, but... How do you think of it? That could be anything. Like I love this little toddler. You know, I love pizza. It could be anything.

The conversation feels like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. If it's a battle between optimism and pessimism, It feels like pessimism is winning. It was surprising to get the weather, and I thought, where are these people doing? Yeah. I just felt like it was a gift. Okay, thank you.

Yeah. I'm a little old now. to be concerned. Do you feel like it's too late? Yeah. I do. That baby Stefano doesn't exist anymore. When he was taken out of Anita's arms, he became Stephen.

And Stephen is a 68-year-old man dealing with ill health. The feelings of a stranger who encountered him for one day as a toddler seemed largely irrelevant. Debbie wanted to give Stefano a gift, but Stephen doesn't want that gift. I'm going to have to discharge now, so I'm going to leave you folks me. Before he goes, though,

Stephen asks if we could mail him a copy of the photograph, of Anita and him on the plane. Mail that to me? Yeah. Please. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. It was so nice talking to you. I really appreciate you taking the time. I wish you the best. I wish you well. Okay. Thank you.

After we hang up, Debbie and I sit in silence for a moment. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to know what to make of any of it. On the one hand, Stephen's reaction is reason. It is strange to be called up by the daughter of a woman you spent one day with when you were a two-year-old. In some ways, the story of Anita and Stefano was an easier one to tell when it was incomplete. A woman immigrates with a baby and thinks about him for the rest of her life. And then, what? The baby becomes a man and doesn't care? The man who was once the baby

faces hardship? Nice anecdotes become harder to sum up when you involve the lives. of real people. He took it differently than I thought. Definitely took it differently than I thought. It's just, I think the part that makes me cry a little bit is that he didn't want to hear my mom. Yeah. But you can't make people, you know, see things the way you see them. You can never assume a gift, you know? Mm-hmm. Debbie is disappointed, though. Not just because of what she wanted and didn't get, but because of what she did get. While our picture of Stephen's life is fragmented, the details he shared contained a lot of sorrow.

And I don't know how my mom, I think maybe how would it have been for her if she would have actually met him or talked to him. You know, maybe it's better that I did. How do you think she would have dealt with it? Like, what do you think she would have said to him? Oh, she would have told him. She loved him. She probably would have invited him over. Really? She would have figured out a way to feed him.

My mom loved deeply. Yeah, she really loved people deeply. The love that was more than pizza, I don't think he could even comprehend it. I think most people couldn't comprehend that. In that video of Anita, the one that Stephen didn't want to hear, there's a moment where Anita wonders if she's being understood. That's a nice story.

I don't know if you understand it. I think so. When I first saw it, I assumed she was referring to her accent, or less than perfect English. But now, I wonder if there was something more behind it. We live our lives in the desperate hope that if we find the right words, tell the story the right way, our love will be understood, we will be understood.

We hope even as we misconstrue and grow offended and talk past each other, we hope love, some iota of it, will get through. Even though time and time again, we're disappointed. The next time I speak with Debbie, she tells me how the night after her call with Stephen, she woke up at 3 a.m. from a bad dream. She got out of bed and went downstairs.

It was pouring outside. And Debbie thought about Stefano, the boy her mother held on the airplane back in 1959. And she thought about the man she spoke to on the phone 65 years later, and she thought about her mom, and she grieved, crying for about an hour. Maybe this will plant a seed for Stephen, Debbie tells me. After all, he did seem to really want that photograph. Maybe someday he'll look back at the thing she was trying to tell him, and he'll finally feel that love from her mother. It seems like an unlikely hope, but in this way,

Debbie is like her mom. You know, I'm gonnae, you know, and you ...and... ...on...

...and... ...and... ...which... ...the... Now that the furniture is returning to its goodwill home Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damage deposit Take this moment to decide This event it if we try

This episode of This episode of heavyweight was produced by Kalila Holt And me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanagan. Our supervising producer is Stevie Lane, editorial guidance from Emily Condon. Special thanks to Ben Nattif Haffrey, Lucy Sullivan, and Trina Manino. Emma Munger mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows,

John K. Sampson, and Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by Blue Dot Sessions, Saigon would-be Soul, and Katie Mullins. Our theme song is by The Weaker Than's Courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast or email us at heavyweight at pushkin.fm. Tune in next week for a special Pushkin anthology show

about mistakes with the hosts of Risky Business, cautionary tales, heavyweight. Hey, that's me. critical acclaim and to my personal great enjoyment is now coming out with a new chapter called Bone Valley Season 3, Graves County. Graves County is hosted by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maggie Freeling and its executive produced by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gilbert King. This season, Maggie takes us to a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, where a terrible discovery on the front lawn of a middle school invites a string of amateur and professional investigators to try to solve a

murder. Maggie is the latest investigator to get pulled in, and she'll take all of us along as she teases out this complicated web of rumors and lies, and perhaps even the truth. Listen to Bone Valley Season 3, Graves County, wherever you get your podcasts. And subscribe to Lava for Good Plus to hear the entire season at free. This is an I-Heart podcast. Thank you.