Tom Papaleo cared for St. Petersburg's softball and baseball fields under the Florida sun for more than 25 years.
Then he got sick.
After a few days in the hospital last year, a surgeon told him the infection he developed wasn't responding to medication.
His left leg had to go.
But when Papaleo wheeled into prosthetist Michael Rieth's office to get a prosthetic leg, he learned city insurance would cover $1,000 of the cost of a $10,000 limb.
After a year of waiting, calls to City Hall and a change in city policy, Papaleo is walking again on a new prosthetic leg built tough for him.
Papaleo, 45, started working for the city at 17 after his family moved to St. Petersburg from Harlem. It was just a temporary job to help him get through college, he said.
He's been there for nearly 28 years now.
"These guys I work with now, I used to work with their dads," he said.
Papaleo worried he wouldn't be able to go to work after a drug-resistant MRSA infection in May 2008 sidelined him. Surgeons removed his leg below the knee. The infection stopped spreading.
For months after surgery, Papaleo called amputee groups trying to find a way to get a prosthetic leg. With middle class standing, governmental assistance was unavailable even though Papaleo was out of work 10 months.
Those months were tougher than the surgery, he said.
In October, Rieth gave him a prosthetic leg constructed of used and old components. It slipped when Papaleo hopped on or off the riding mower when he came back to work in March. But, said Papaleo, "To me it was brand new, because I was walking again."
Rieth said his heart went out to Papaleo when he first wheeled into his office.
"He's my age. He's got a family. He's in a wheelchair," Rieth said. "I put myself in his shoes."
Nancy McKay thought it wasn't enough.
"Someone had to step up to the plate for him," said McKay, director of reimbursements at Rieth's office. "He did it for the city for 27 years."
She called the mayor's office, the city's human resources department and the city's insurance provider.
Vicki Grant, the city's benefits manager, also went to work.
"We'd never had this situation before," she said.
With a bit of tinkering, Grant said, the city increased the coverage in April at no additional cost to taxpayers. The department also reviewed other health benefits, she said.
Papaleo came back to work in March. He whips the red riding mower around the baseball fields at the Naimoli sports complex like he never left.
His new leg, now 3 weeks old, is tanned like his right leg after 10-hour days in the sun.
"It's like going from a Yugo to a Cadillac," he said of his new leg. "I don't even think. I just go."
Jackie Alexander can be reached at (727) 893-8779 or jdalexander@sptimes.com.
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