Highlands Current Audio Stories

Blame foreclosure on 'unhinged' acquaintance

A state judge has been asked to decide if a former Philipstown couple will have a chance to reclaim a Route 9 property they lost to foreclosure because of what they say was deception by an acquaintance.

Judge Gina Capone on Jan. 2 issued a temporary order restraining M&T Bank from transferring the deed for 3154 Route 9, which from 1995 to early 2024 was owned by Sokhara Kim through Mary Dawn Inc., and hosted her business, Nice & Neat Dry Cleaners; a residence she shared with her husband, Chakra Oeur; and a nail salon.

Kim and Oeur, immigrants from Cambodia who also operated a restaurant and art gallery at the property, were evicted on Dec. 9, ending a 17-month foreclosure process that began in August 2022 after Kim stopped making payments on a $570,000 mortgage held by M&T. Capone ordered the foreclosure in February 2024. Four months later, a bank subsidiary, Chesapeake Holdings, paid $620,200 for the property at an auction.

On Thursday (Jan. 15), Capone will hold a hearing to consider Kim and Oeur's defense — that they were victims of Derek Keith Williams, who met the couple when his girlfriend, Mauny Sun, owned the nail salon. According to court documents, Williams convinced Kim that he had paid off the mortgage. He hid the foreclosure by demanding that she "turn over any mail or paperwork relating to the property, Mary Dawn Inc., any court or any bank," said her attorney, Jacob Chen.

From the start, Chen argued, the court "never acquired personal jurisdiction" over Kim because the process server said he handed the original documents to a "co-worker." Chen also said that Oeur should have been included as a party to the foreclosure proceeding because he lived at the property and managed the Khmer Art Gallery.

Their loss of the property is a "deeply tragic — and profoundly avoidable — result" of the actions of "an unhinged and dangerous criminal who exercised coercive control over them," said Chen, who is asking Capone to vacate the foreclosure and give Kim and Oeur a chance to regain the property.

In a statement filed with the court, Kim said a personal loan she used to rebuild the property after a fire in 2005 had been taken over by M&T Bank when she met Williams through Bun in 2019. Kim said that Bun, whose mother she had known for over 30 years, "reminded me a lot of my daughter … and I put a lot of trust and faith in her." She decided to accept Williams' offer to buy the property for $1.2 million and transfer it to an entity called DKW Trust.

"I had worked tirelessly for many, many years at that point," said Kim. "I was excited about the opportunity to take a break from working and to be able to give something to my grandchildren, and so I agreed."

Williams requested access to the Mary Dawn bank account, provided Kim with "official-looking documents containing seals and stamps" and said he had paid off the mortgage and would let her live there while he "finalized" the trust, according to court documents.

In addition to demanding that any mail related to courts and the bank be turned over to him, he asked Kim to sign documents and submit filings without explaining what they were, and demanded access to her emails, according to court documents.

Williams "treated questions as disobedience — responding with rage, profanity and intimidation, including threats that she would 'lose everything,' that the property was 'his' and that he could have her evicted if she did not comply," according to court documents. Kim said she "got on my knees and begged" when Williams badgered her to take him shopping instead of taking Oeur to a hospital visit ahead of his looming kidney transplant.

Carmen Chuchuca, who assumed ownership of the nail salon, said Williams began collecting $2,500 per month in "rent" from her, saying he owned the property, which Kim confirmed to her. (Chuchuca moved out before the eviction and has reopened at 1806 Route 9D in Cold Spring.) Kim said she also provided Will...

Outages, decreased pressure experienced throughout city

A water main break near Fishkill Avenue caused reduced pressure and discolored water in parts of Beacon on Wednesday (Jan. 7), but was repaired by 7 p.m.

The city issued a targeted boil water advisory for residents along Fishkill Avenue from Conklin Street to the Town of Fishkill border, including all side streets. If you are experiencing discolored water, run the cold tap until the water runs clear.

Photos by J. Simms

A new insertion valve was installed.

Workers repair the main.

After the repair, the site was cleaned up.

The break, which occurred in the Groveville area, was "pretty significant," said City Administrator Chris White. The main that broke is an old pipe, and the issue is unrelated to any of the recent work on Fishkill/Teller Avenue, he said.

Superintendent Matt Landahl announced emergency early dismissal for Beacon City School District students. Beacon High School dismissed at noon, Rombout Middle School at 12:45 p.m. and the district's four elementary schools at 1:15 p.m. All afterschool activities were canceled.

Valdés Smith, who represents part of Beacon, becomes chair

Democrats inaugurated their new majority in the Dutchess County Legislature on Monday (Jan. 6) by electing Yvette Valdés Smith, who represents Ward 4 in Beacon and part of Fishkill, as its new chair.

Five of the party's candidates beat Republican incumbents in November to flip what had been a 15-10 majority in favor of the GOP. The wins gave Democrats, who now hold 15 seats, control of the Legislature for the first time since 2008. Valdés Smith ascends from minority leader to chair.

"We will make Dutchess a county that works for all, not just for some," she said. "We deserve affordable, safe, equitable and supportive communities throughout our great county, and we are committed to stewarding in an era of progress, growth and sustainability."

County Executive Sue Serino, a Republican who will have to work with a Democrat-led Legislature for the first time since being elected in 2023, issued a statement congratulating Valdés Smith. She said that Dutchess has, for the first time, women simultaneously holding her seat and chairing the Legislature.

"I look forward to continuing our collaborative relationship as she steps into this new leadership role," said Serino.

Democrats also appointed Julie Shiroishi as clerk of the Legislature. A Beacon resident, Shiroishi is a former chief of staff for Assembly Member Jonathan Jacobson and former candidate for the state Senate seat held by Rob Rolison. Gregory Totino, a Fishkill Town Board member, was named deputy clerk.

After November's election, the party announced that Barrington Atkins, a City of Poughkeepsie legislator and assistant minority leader, was chosen to be majority leader. Kristofer Munn, who represents Red Hook in the Legislature, was elected assistant majority leader.

The Democrats introduced a resolution to replace the legislative attorney, Ian Lindars, who was reappointed on Dec. 13 to a five-year term, with Michael Treybich. It passed, 15-10, along party lines.

The Democrats also appointed Clara Masters, a Beacon resident, as assistant to the chair.

Second conviction overturned in Marcinak death

A state appeals court ordered a second retrial of a former Lake Peekskill man twice convicted in the 2008 killing of Philipstown resident John Marcinak at his business on Route 9.

In a ruling issued Dec. 31, the state Appellate Division said Judge Edward McLoughlin deprived Anthony Grigoroff of a fair trial in 2017, when a second jury convicted him of murdering Marcinak, 49. A lifelong Philipstown resident and owner of the Garrison Garage, where he operated a towing service, Marcinak was shot on the morning of New Year's Eve.

His body was found close to the road, and first responders initially thought he had been struck by a car. But doctors at the Hudson Valley Hospital Center found multiple gunshot wounds.

Known as "Johnny," Marcinak grew up in Garrison and attended O'Neill High School in Highlands Falls. He inherited the towing business from his late father, also named John. He was survived by his wife, Janet, and three children: Julie, then 14, John, 9, and Joey, 8. Marcinak was buried at Cold Spring Cemetery.

Janet Jonigan, his widow, called the granting of a third trial "shameful and ridiculous" in an emailed statement. "My husband didn't get any chances when he was ambushed, shot multiple times and left to die on the sidewalk," said Jonigan, who has remarried. "Two juries have come to the same conclusion and I have no doubt the district attorney will secure another conviction."

Grigoroff, whose first conviction in 2010 was also overturned, did not get a fair retrial in 2017, according to the appeals court, because McLoughlin limited testimony from an expert witness who considered the defendant "more vulnerable than the average person to falsely confessing."

That expert wanted to cite research from the Innocence Project, which at the time found that 25 percent of people exonerated through DNA evidence had confessed, along with another study from the University of Michigan Law School on the prevalence of false confessions, particularly by people with intellectual disabilities or mental illnesses.

But McLoughlin "improperly concluded that those studies were not relevant to the defendant and the interrogation" because the case did not involve DNA and despite an evaluation determining that Grigoroff had "an IQ lower than 93 percent of individuals in his age group," according to the decision. McLoughlin also allowed a prosecution expert to testify that research on false confessions "is scant" and that studies of their nexus with "psychological vulnerabilities was a 'primitive subdiscipline.' "

Grigoroff's expert had to testify via a video recording played in court because McLoughlin ordered the trial to begin when the expert could not appear in person, noted the appeals judges. Because "the sole evidence is the defendant's confession and the crux of the defense was the testimony of an expert in false confessions … the errors had the cumulative effect of depriving the defendant of his due process right to a fair trial," according to the decision.

Robert Tendy, Putnam County's district attorney, said on Jan. 2 that he disagreed with the appeals court, but "we are bound by the decision and are already in the process of getting the case ready for retrial."

Danielle Muscatello, an attorney who has represented Grigoroff in both appeals, said on Monday (Jan. 5), that two families have been victimized — the Marcinaks, "because I don't think they ever got the justice they deserved," and the Grigoroffs.

"The first two trials have not been fair, and if they do want to retry him a third time, we hope that this one will be fair and that we'll finally get to bring him home," she said.

At the first trial, a jury found Grigoroff guilty of second-degree murder, criminal possession of a weapon and attempted burglary. Judge James Reitz sentenced him to 25 years to life in prison in December 2010.

Grigoroff, then 18, said he drove to the garage with his identical twin, Erick, and a friend, Byro...

7,000 miles and lots of whales

Earlier this year, Aaron Wolfe realized that spending 15 years in an office developing website applications was killing him, physically and spiritually.

Not wanting to die at his desk, the 59-year-old Cold Spring resident made a radical decision: He would sail across the Atlantic Ocean — alone.

His course: a 7,000-mile loop, with stops in Newfoundland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, the Canary Islands and the Caribbean.

He considered a more traditional restorative adventure, hiking the Appalachian Trail, but determined sailing was a natural fit. He'd been sailing since age 8, at camp.

Wolfe set sail on June 2 from the Chelsea Yacht Club, north of Beacon, aboard Badger, a 27-foot Vancouver cutter. After anchoring near the Statue of Liberty, he passed under the Verrazano Bridge. At that point, "you're not quite in the ocean, but almost," he said in an interview by phone and over Facebook.

He traveled up the East Coast to Nova Scotia, the farthest he had ever sailed. Then it was on to the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, before heading east to Newfoundland.

"My plan was to get that far and see how I felt," Wolfe said. "It felt obvious that if I was to do it, now was the time. I loaded up with food and water and went."

Before long he encountered an iceberg. "I sailed safely to within a couple of hundred yards," he said. "There were whales all over the place; it was an amazing day."

He averaged about 5 miles per hour; it took 17 days to reach Dingle, a town on the southwest coast of Ireland.

Wildlife kept him company along the way. "There were seabirds all the way across," Wolfe said. "I swear, one bird followed me most of the way — a Northern fulmar, I think."

Several types of dolphins made regular appearances, as did humpback and pilot whales. "A fin whale came up to breathe, slowly circled Badger, then went on," Wolfe said. "It was bigger than the boat. That was impressive!"

An olive shop in Mohammedia, Morocco

An onboard party in Portugal

Badger

Fishing boats in Morocco

Sailing under spinnaker

Portside dolphins

Boat traffic was almost nonexistent. During his crossing, Wolfe saw only two commercial ships, both as he neared Ireland. Fishing boats were common just before he spotted land.

The North Atlantic can be rough, but Wolfe said he enjoyed favorable sailing weather. "It was a very safe trip, with no storms," he said. "The wind was strong a few times, but nothing to worry about." By contrast, conditions in the Irish Sea were "hair-raising," he said, but served "to escalate my experience" as a sailor.

Most days in the Atlantic were cold, foggy and drizzly. "I don't think I had a night where I could see the full sky and stars," Wolfe said. Night sailing is peaceful, he said, allowing him to get several hours of sleep at a time. But when near shore, especially in areas with fishing boats, he had to wake every 20 minutes or so.

He did not go hungry. "My food's been pretty good," Wolfe said. "I have an ice box and a little freezer, so I kept fresh food for quite a while." A Fogo Island fisherman gave him fresh cod. His staples were duck-flavored ramen, pasta and rice.

When not being treated to wildlife sightings, he had a good supply of books, podcasts and music. "I sometimes read a book a day," he said. "And it was good to hear someone's voice on an audiobook."

While at sea, Wolfe spent little time at the helm because Badger has a self-steering wind vane that keeps it on course. "I steered by hand for about half an hour," he said.

Did he wonder about Magellan, Sir Francis Drake and the other great explorers as he plied the Atlantic? "I certainly considered how much harder it would have been for them without any electronic navigation equipment," Wolfe said. "The charts now are incredible."

Once he reached the coasts of Portugal and Spain, with fishing boats and changing water depths, he sailed by hand. He also added two crew members, a young man and a woman, who agree...

BJ's closes after 47 years

Beacon's Main Street is bound to feel somber for lifelong residents as the calendar flips to 2026: BJ's Restaurant, which for 47 years has cooked up batches of soul food while serving as an unofficial community gathering place, has changed ownership.

The building's new owner, an LLC, will operate a restaurant in the space at 213 Main, but declined to say what type of food will be offered. The sale closed on Wednesday (Dec. 31); the building was listed in June for $1.1 million.

Barbara Sims said her age and health left her little choice but to sell the restaurant she opened in 1978. She'll be 90 in September and said it would make no sense for her to pour money into an older building.

"The sad thing is I'd keep it open, but I have nobody to pass it on to," she said. "If I did, it would be a whole lot different.

"My customers have been very good to me," she said. "But nothing lasts forever."

Her 66-year-old daughter, Brenda, who has worked with her mother daily for 21 years, said her own health concerns contributed to the decision. Before working full-time at the restaurant, she worked part-time there, especially on long weekends, while serving in the U.S. Army, including six years stationed at West Point.

The building, which includes two upstairs apartments, had been a Greek restaurant. Barbara bought it out of foreclosure.

Initially, BJ's offered mostly coffee and donuts, with Barbara's mother, Thelma Humphrey, opening the shop early each morning and running it until Barbara returned from her job as a nurse's aide at the VA Hospital in Montrose, a position she held for two decades.

"Thelma made the donuts," Barbara said. "In those early years, we'd take in no more than $50 a day."

That changed when a customer urged Barbara to "have a fish fry." She bought 10 pounds of fish, put a paper sign in the window and quickly sold out. Whiting, porgy and tilapia were popular.

Barbara said Beacon was a different city in the 1970s and '80s. "I had to replace my store windows about six times," she said. "I bought metal shutters that I'd roll down when we were closed."

BJ's — the name came from Barbara Joan and Brenda Joyce — is one of the last "old Beacon" businesses on Main Street and was more than a place to grab a quick bite. "Every time there was a funeral or wedding, people would come here," Barbara said. "They'd get food, but they'd also hang out and meet each other. That's another sad part about closing."

Her favorite menu items were fish, potato salad and home fries. For Brenda, it was chicken wings. Customers liked oxtails, fried chicken, barbecue ribs and chicken wings. "We'd go through up to six, 40-pound cases of wings a week," Brenda said, noting that 75 percent of their business was takeout.

Brenda said she'll miss customers the most. "Complete strangers became like family to me," she said. But she won't miss working 12 to 14 hours daily.

Up to the moment the closed sign went into the door, Barbara did all the baking, including corn bread, pies and cakes. "I made three cakes yesterday: carrot, lemon and vanilla chocolate," she said on Monday (Dec. 29).

Customers would call to ensure Barbara's deviled eggs were available. No one liked them more than Tim O'Leary, a lifelong Beacon resident. "Brenda would text me pictures of them and ask how many I wanted set aside," he said.

He emphasized what Barbara and Brenda meant to the community. "They saw us through the rough times, they really did," he said. "They've always been kind, hardworking ladies," although he noted Barbara's big heart was lined with tough love. "People in need would go to her, and she would help them," O'Leary said. "But she'd also tell them what they needed to do."

Barbara lamented the shortage of familiar customers from her generation. "Most regulars my age have either passed away or moved on," she said.

But Brenda said the children of Barbara's generation were still regulars, including a group that, during warm weather months,...

Theorbo and lute performer will discuss craft

Richard Kolb has never met anyone in Beacon who owns a theorbo. Ditto for a 10-string Baroque guitar, but there could be a few lute owners, he says.

Kolb also plays standard classical guitar, which he studied in college, but figured that the exotic instruments were more marketable as entrees into Renaissance and Baroque performance and scholarship. He will perform with and discuss the instruments on Sunday (Jan. 4) at the Lucky Dog club inside Beacon Music Factory, 333 Fishkill Ave.

The musician's email address includes the birthdate of Francesco da Milano (1487), a favorite composer and lute picker, so it's slightly jarring to see Buddy Holly and Ella Fitzgerald CDs in his home studio.

As an educator and freelance musician, he says he's "eked out a living" teaching, playing with Baroque orchestras and serving as scholar-in-residence at the New York Continuo Collective.

The Frankenstein-like theorbo is an integral part of the Baroque repertoire because they typically have 14 strings and offer a wide tonal range, especially in the low end. It is also "ideal for accompanying vocals," says Kolb, who is 5-foot-11 and stands about 6 inches shorter than the instrument.

Lutes, which resemble elaborate gourds, look like they're bent out of shape because, unlike a six-string guitar, the headstock at the end of the fretboard is tilted at what looks like a 90-degree angle. The design tightens the tension from the string's end to the tuning peg.

Most acoustic guitars include a circle cut into the soundboard beneath the strings to amplify the volume; the holes on Kolb's instruments have intricate carvings, called "roses," that stand on their own as works of art.

Antique instruments are too brittle to play, says Kolb, so every lute, theorbo or Baroque guitar is a reproduction. His were made in Montreal.

Though tuned differently, the Baroque guitar is more of a forerunner to the six-string than the lute, he says. "There's a substantial repertoire for the Baroque guitar," says Kolb, who has done yeoman's work editing, transcribing and publishing the complete works of two Italian composers, Barbara Strozzi (1619-1677) and Francesca Caccini (1587-1640).

"There were a lot of excellent female musicians back then, but their legacy got lost in part because it was considered to be socially improper," he says. "They started coming to light in the 1990s."

It took Kolb 10 years to publish an eight-volume set covering Strozzi's compositions, "who was famous in her own time," he says. Supported by soprano Elissa Edwards, he recorded two albums of material culled from the collection, playing theorbo and archlute.

In addition, Kolb researched and modernized antique sheet music of Caccini's work, a process that took four years. He plans to record selections.

In his home near Memorial Park, Kolb protects his prized instruments with a humidifier. But he also owns less-fragile guitars, such as a solid-body electric Telecaster, like the one used by Buddy Holly, and a jazz-style archtop, perfect for accompanying an Ella Fitzgerald combo.

However, they have never beckoned to him like the instruments used four centuries ago in Europe. "I wish I could play jazz," he says. "But I got focused on this other, narrow world."

Putnam has highest rate in state

A surge in flu cases has propelled New York State to a one-week record and sent infections and hospitalizations in Dutchess and Putnam counties to their highest levels in at least two years.

Cases reported by testing labs and hospitals reached 71,123 statewide for the week ending Dec. 20, raising the tally of the achy and the sniffling by 38 percent over the previous seven days and the most in one week since New York made flu cases reportable in 2004. Cases fell by 32 percent during the next reporting period, the week ending Dec. 27, but hospitalizations hit a record, 4,546 compared to 3,666 during the seven-day period ending Dec. 20, according to James McDonald, the state's health commissioner.

Among those hospitalized, 41 percent were 75 and older and 20 percent between 65 and 74. Hospitals and nursing homes in New York have also been experiencing outbreaks this flu season, which annually runs from October to May.

More cases are being reported due to heightened testing, McDonald said in a statement about the one-week high in positive flu tests, "but this record number underscores that this season is impacting more people than in other recent years."

His department's data shows that 24 percent of state residents, including 22 percent in Dutchess and 24 percent in Putnam, have received a flu vaccine. The data, which only reports pediatric deaths from the flu, shows that two children under 18 have died this season.

"There are simple steps New Yorkers can take to protect themselves and those around them, including getting vaccinated, staying home when sick and practicing everyday preventive measures," he said.

Rian Rodriguez, Putnam's public health director, offered the same advice. He said on Dec. 24 that Putnam's rate of 918 flu cases per 100,000 residents topped the state and was 61 percent higher than Nassau County on Long Island.

Both the 903 flu cases in Putnam and the 1,276 reported in Dutchess (nearly three times higher than the previous week) for the week ending Dec. 20 were the highest seven-day totals since at least October 2023, according to state data. Positive tests in both counties fell the following week, to 1,073 in Dutchess and 510 in Putnam.

Both counties also have more hospitalizations this flu season — 27 in Putnam and 187 in Dutchess — than at the same points in 2023 and 2024. Hospitalizations increased from 31 to 47 in Dutchess and from one to nine in Putnam for the week ending Dec. 20. They increased again in the new data reported for Dec. 27, to 89 hospitalizations in Dutchess and 14 in Putnam.

A county-produced heat map (putnamcountyny.gov/respdash) based on ZIP code data shows Carmel with the highest rate in Putnam for the week ending Dec. 20, with the rate in 10524 (Garrison/Philipstown) higher than in 10516 (Cold Spring/Philipstown).

Children are the most vulnerable to the flu, followed by older adults, Rodriguez said. Pregnant women and people with chronic medical conditions such as heart or lung disease, asthma and diabetes are also at risk of serious complications.

In addition, cases of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) and COVID-19 reported by laboratories are rising, although their numbers are dwarfed by the flu. Statewide, there were 4,904 reported cases of RSV for the week ending Dec. 20, an increase of 25 percent from the previous week. The number of people with COVID rose 3 percent, to 4,255. Both caseloads fell in the updated data reported on Dec. 27, with RSV cases down by 11 percent and COVID-19 cases down by 20 percent, although the number of people hospitalized with those infections increased.

On Dec. 30, the most recent reporting day, the state health department reported 23 positive COVID tests in Dutchess and nine in Putnam.

Visits to new businesses in Beacon and Cold Spring

The Chisel

Robert Corio knows how to wield tools. His salon in Beacon, The Chisel, is where he showcases his expertise in creating form, whether it's the styles he cuts or the wood furnishings he's crafted.

Corio has been a hair stylist for years, starting in New Jersey at his father's shop and graduating to high-end New York City salons before opening a place in Cold Spring with a twist: barbering and beer. While still a partner at Barber and Brew, he's stepped back. In Beacon, he's offering something that's neither a barbershop nor a traditional salon, but a hybrid.

"We're very gender-neutral," Corio says. "We want to curate an environment that supports people." Corio believes Beacon was craving a place like The Chisel.

Corio occupies the main chair, and several stylists work with him. His wife, Liz, whose background is in fundraising and development, is at the front desk.

There are plans for expansion, with colorists joining the group several days a week. "We're hiring," says Corio.

The Chisel, at 155 Main St. in Beacon, is open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., or by appointment. See chiselbeacon.com or call 845-265-0128.

Feel Good Fitness

Lisa Delgado-Caccomo has worked in fitness for years, in both chain and boutique enterprises. This year, she took the plunge with her own shop, Feel Good Fitness, which she describes as "a local space" where people can participate in boxing, Zumba, yoga, spin or Pilates classes and use the treadmills and free weights.

The former Beacon High School athlete says she enjoys helping neighbors "feel good about themselves." She found a location with good visibility and a multi-year lease.

Before opening, Delgado-Caccomo relied on the services of Dutchess County SCORE to analyze her business plan. Nine months in, "it's trending in the right direction in all areas," she says. Most of the trainers are friends, and her mother, sister, niece, daughter and husband have pitched in.

"It's surreal to have the opportunity to have a business on Main Street in the place where I grew up," she says.

Feel Good Fitness is located at 301 Main St. in Beacon. The sauna and gym are open from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Monday, Thursday and Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday. See feelgoodfitnessny.com or call 845-440-6005.

The Floral Society

Sierra Yaun has expanded her Dobbs Ferry shop to Beacon. The Floral Society is not a florist but specializes in bloom-related products. Foot traffic has helped the business take root in the community, says Yaun.

Yaun has lived in Beacon with her daughter for three years. "The objects and tools sold at the store can be kept for life," she says. "They're not disposable." Stock includes home and garden products, beeswax candles, Japanese clippers and ceramic vases.

Yaun grew up with a shopkeeper mother in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, so retail is "woven into my DNA - how people come together, and how people support one another," she says.

She says she is all-in on brick-and-mortar, where people can select something beautiful for themselves or loved ones. Because of the popularity of online shopping, "gifting can be a lost art," she says. "There's something special about spending time and effort to choose something."

The Floral Society, at 161 Main St. in Beacon, is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Sunday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday. See thefloralsociety.com or call 914-885-4230.

Kapé Mo

Filipino coffee beans have come to Cold Spring courtesy of Kapé Mo, an outlet in the Collective at 75 Main St. Mina Soriano-Elwell, her spouse, Angie Soriano-Elwell, and Angie's sister, Jessica Raquino, say they jumped at the opportunity to rent the first-floor space when a previous cafe closed.

Now, it's a spot for Filipino flair, with drinks and food from Angie and Jessica's homeland. The menu includes sweet pork sausage, adobe chicken sandwiches, gluten-free pastries, chai, matcha, apple cider an...

Family's lawsuit still pending against driver

A state judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed against the City of Beacon by the family of a woman who died after being struck in a Main Street crosswalk.

Judge Christi Acker also dismissed the family's lawsuit against Kearns Electric, the company that services the city's pedestrian signals. The civil suit is pending against Jacqueline Milohnic, the driver, and her husband, the vehicle's owner.

Milohnic, 59 at the time, was driving a 2019 Jeep Wrangler on Dec. 1, 2021, when she turned left from Main Street onto Teller Avenue just after 3 p.m. and hit Carla Giuffrida, 75, a retired teacher who lived in Beacon.

According to police reports, Giuffrida suffered a serious head injury but was conscious and breathing while being treated by first responders. She died five hours later at Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla.

Lindsay Giuffrida and her brother, Mauro, filed a lawsuit against the Milohnics, Kearns and the city in 2023. It said that their mother was crossing Teller with a "Walk" signal and alleged that Milohnic was "careless, reckless and negligent" and driving at "a dangerous and excessive rate of speed."

They also claimed that Milohnic failed to yield to Giuffrida or to operate her vehicle "as a reasonable and prudent person." The suit seeks a financial judgment "in amounts commensurate with the injuries and damages sustained."

On Dec. 10, Acker granted motions by the city and Kearns for summary judgment, which ended the case against them.

Leo Kearns, the president and owner of Kearns Electric, said in written testimony that the company has maintained traffic and pedestrian control devices in Beacon for 30 years. The signals at Teller and Main were functioning properly when he performed yearly maintenance eight months before the accident, he said, and the company had received no complaints.

Attorneys for the City of Beacon said the street and pedestrian signals at the intersection were properly designed, constructed and maintained. Brian O'Rourke, an engineer who submitted testimony for the city, noted that "within a reasonable degree of engineering certainty," traffic and pedestrian studies conducted at the site were "an adequate and reasonable evaluation" of conditions.

The design of the intersection did not cause the accident, O'Rourke argued. Instead, it was Giuffrida crossing and Milohnic accelerating into a left turn and failing to yield to the pedestrian.

An engineer who testified for the Giuffrida family alleged the city was liable because it had failed to provide a "leading pedestrian interval" of at least three seconds before the traffic light turned green, or other safety measures. But the judge ruled that "the liability of a municipality begins and ends with the fulfillment of its duty to construct and maintain its highways in a reasonably safe condition."

A leading pedestrian interval has been installed at the intersection since the accident, City Administrator Chris White said on Tuesday (Dec. 23).

In her decision, Acker wrote that the Giuffrida family must provide evidence that the city's studies were "plainly inadequate" or that there was "no reasonable basis" for the traffic plan. "They fail to do so," the judge wrote.

In a statement, Lindsay and Mauro Giaffrida said they were "deeply disappointed" by Acker's decisions. The Dutchess County Transportation Council ranks Teller and Main as having the fourth-most pedestrian accidents among intersections in the county, they said, "yet meaningful safety improvements were ignored and delayed for years."

"We hope the City of Beacon begins to prioritize pedestrian safety and proactively implements proven traffic-calming and visibility measures throughout the community," the siblings said. "Beacon should be a city where public safety is treated as a responsibility, not an afterthought."

Milohnic was ticketed for failing to yield to a pedestrian. She challenged the citation, and City Court Judge Greg Johnston dismisse...