Rudolph N. Riccio

Knowing What Matters
When Rudolph Riccio was a teenager, his parents got sick and died 13 months apart. His older sister, Meg, took care of him and of their younger sister. One day when Mr. Riccio was 17, he approached Meg and asked her for $80 to buy a pair of boots.

"I said to him, 'Rudy, I can't give you money for boots. I don't have that kind of money," said Meg Durrance, now 44. "He looked at me and said, 'If I work, can I then buy the boots I want?' I said yes. It was his money."

So, Mr. Riccio worked a paper route for a few weeks and saved up the $80. But he did not buy the boots. Instead, he left the money for his sister in an envelope on the kitchen counter. A note inside the envelope read, "We need the money to buy food, not to buy boots."

Ms. Durrance cried. She still cries, retelling the story so many years later. Mr. Riccio went on to finish high school and take some computer classes in college. Eventually, he got a computer job with Cantor Fitzgerald's eSpeed division. He was 40, married to Joanne Riccio, and lived in the Bronx, where he had lived all his life.

"It's like I've lost a child," Ms. Durrance said. "We had a connection most brothers and sisters don't have. We learned to rely on one another."