Local woman going the distance to honor her father

by TOM UTESCHER

While growing up in Chestnut Hill, Heather DiRienzo used to enjoy her family's Fathers Day outings. Her parents, Herb and Evelyn Oliveiri, used to take Heather and her younger brother Ryan to the Cedarbrook Country Club, where they would spend hours smacking golf balls on the driving range.

Herb used to coach baseball in the old Chestnut Hill Fathers Club program, and he could usually be found cheering from the sidelines at Heather's soccer and softball games. Shortly before his daughter graduated from Mount St. Joseph Academy in 1993, Oliveiri began to suffer a series of minor strokes, and this led to his untimely death five years later at the age of 63.

This Fathers Day, Heather will in engage in an athletic endeavor through which she can pay tribute to her Dad, while also helping raise awareness of the condition which caused his premature passing. Since mid-winter she's been training with the American Stroke Association team which will run in the annual Kona Marathon, a full-length marathon (26.2 miles) which takes place on Fathers Day on the western shore of the "Big Island" of Hawaii.

She'd visited Hawaii in 1990, when the Oliveiris won a trip to the 50^th state in a raffle.

"It was the last family vacation that we took together before my Dad got sick," she remembers.

Heather, who has an undergraduate degree from St. Joseph's University and a Masters from Villanova, now works as an elementary school counselor for the Colonial School District in Whitemarsh Township. One of her colleagues there competed at Kona in 2002 and now coaches runners for the American Stroke Association, which was founded in 1998 as a division of the American Heart Association. Each ASA entrant in the race must raise $5000 through donations and pledges, and the bulk of the money is used to promote stroke prevention and education.

"The idea of running Kona grew on me, because it hit home in a lot of ways," Heather said. "It was an athletic event, it was in Hawaii, it was on Fathers Day, it was for a cause which is obviously important to me."

A lawyer by profession, Herb Oliveiri was involved in Philadelphia politics and also in the running of a well-known family business - his father was the "Pat" of Pat's Steaks.

"He had some mini-strokes that went mis-diagnosed, so he probably had the first ones when I was in high school," Heather relates. "The first time that we really realized there was a problem was my freshman year in college. There was no major event or paralysis, but he would forget how to do things, or go for a walk and forget how to get home. It's called multi-infarction dementia and it just kept getting worse."

Now an educator herself, she's learned a lot about the disease.

"You want to start out by leading a healthy lifestyle; that's something I emphasize even with the elementary school kids I work with," she says. "But stroke can happen to people who are physically active, like my father was. The important thing is to know the signs and to act quickly. Immediate attention is what is going to save a person. They know now that treatment in the first two hours is critical, so you need to get that person to a hospital."

Prior to signing up for the stroke association's marathon effort, Heather says, "I considered myself an athlete, but I didn't consider myself a runner."

Following knee surgery in 2000, she had gotten back into a fitness routine that included regular jogs or power walks of about three miles. She'd covered up to eight miles at a stretch while participating in the annual Multiple Sclerosis Walk in Philadelphia.

"I started training for the marathon February 1, and by May 1 I was up to 18 miles," she reports. "At this point, I'm addicted to it, and I think Kona won't be my last marathon.

"Now's the time to do it, before I have kids," continues Heather, who married Dimitry DiRienzo, an accountant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, three years ago. "I think there's another marathon (for the ASA) in Florida next January."

On weekdays, she sees to her conditioning on her own, either outdoors or at her health club. On Saturdays, she joins other ASA marathon hopefuls in organized training sessions at Valley Forge National Park.

"Two weekends ago I did 20 miles, but we usually don't go that far," she explains. "It's very hilly there, so it's a good place to practice because Kona is very hilly."

To raise the $5000 entry fee for the stroke association, Heather has held a beef-and-beer night and a raffle, and has written numerous letters. Word of her endeavor has gotten around, and she's been contacted by well-wishers she hadn't heard from in years.

"I think this is something I wasn't ready to do until now," she reflects. "I'm at the point now where my Dad has given me a lot of power. I feel like he's watching me from above and kind of carrying me through this. I'm ready to be active as an educator; I want to inform people about strokes and about the technology and the other help that's out there now. This is the next step for me."

Throughout the many steps she'll be taking alongside the Pacific Ocean this Sunday, Heather knows her father's spirit will be with her.