Finding Nikky

When I first saw Nikky, she was holding onto the street sign on a small traffic island where Freeman Parkway intersects with Bloomfield Avenue. I was driving Mariel and her friend Leah home from school. Something was clearly not right and I stopped the car and got out to ask this little old woman if she was ok. She remembered her first and last names -- Nicolina Catalano -- but that was all she could tell me, except that she wanted to go to Bambergers. I am old enough to know that Bambergers hasn't been around in a long time. My first impressions of Nikky were that she appeared to be in her 80s and was lost. She came up to just above my elbow (making her maybe 4' 6" tall) and was wearing matching sweat pants and a sweat shirt and holding a battered black pocketbook. I asked her if she would get in my car so I could bring her to my house and help her figure out where she should be. "Sure", she said, "Why not?" We walked very slowly back to my car. (By now there were about 5 cars lined up behind me waiting to go across Bloomfield Avenue. But not one of them beeped. All the drivers seemed to understand that there was someone here who needed help.) Nikky could hardly walk --she was very unsteady and took very small steps. She held onto my arm with a tight grip, saying over and over, "God love you." She seemed to trust me completely.

Helping her into the back seat of my Suburu Forrester was no easy task. She smiled at the girls, saying "What beautiful girls -- God love you," over and over until we went home. After dropping off Leah, we shuffled slowly into my house and I sat her down in the living room. Mariel went to the kitchen to bring her a glass of water and when she came back into the living room, it was clear that Nikky had no memory of her and asked, who is this beautiful girl? Initially, all Nikky could tell me was her name. After a little while, I asked her if I could look in her purse because maybe it would give us some clues. She was nervous to let go of it, but then did. All it had inside were some old photos, and dollar bills. No i.d. But the photos helped her remember that she had a brother, Frankie, who was a cop. I called the Glen Ridge Police Department, but there was no Catalano on the staff. As Nikky relaxed, she began to talk more about her home in Newark across from Independence Park and St. James Church. But I later found out that everything she remembered was from over 30 years ago.

The GR Police eventually tracked down a Frank Catalano who works in the Sherrif's department in Newark and he turned out to be Nikky's grandson. Until Frank was able to come, Nikky and I sat in my living room holding hands -- with her repeating the mantra "God love you," or "Thank God for you" over and over. She knew she didn't know... but she didn't know what it was that she didn't know.

Frankie, her grandson, finally came. Nikky didn't know who he was, but knew that she should trust him. He told us that she had Alzheimers , and lived in a senior center called "The Walpan Residence" on Christopher Street in Montclair. The residence is about a mile and a half from where I found her, and there is absolutely no way she could have walked there alone. But by then, she did not remember where I had found her, or that she had even been lost, and there was no way to find out from her how she got there. Frankie slowly got her to come with him to his car to take her back to Walpan. By then, I felt an intense connection with Nikky, and knew she would somehow be a part of my life from that day on.