It all started with my aunt.

We’re from Staten Island, and one day in Manhattan she saved a woman from getting her leg stuck between a subway platform and the train. The woman asked my aunt how she could repay her. My aunt’s reply, god bless, was, “Get my nephew a job.”

That job was on the 49th floor at 55 Water St for Bear Stearns Brokerage House. If you’ve seen the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street” it’s somewhat true, but I plead the 5th. I was young, barely out of high school, and here I was with all these brokers. I got to know some of them pretty well, and one told me, “Go see the world while you’re still young.”

Next thing I knew, I was on the crew of a 142-foot luxury yacht. 

I couldn’t believe it. In January 1984, I took my first-ever flight down to Miami where the boat wintered. I stepped aboard and for the next year I basically lived there. The first few weeks blew my mind. We stopped in Virginia and other places on the way to New York City, where the boat spent the summers.

The crew included a chef who posted a daily lunch menu. One day, it read “Flying Fish.” I thought, “where are they getting those?” Turns out, lunch literally flew on board — fish stranded on the deck ended up on the plate.

I almost got fired sneaking someone onto the boat. Almost fired again for asking a guest from the owner’s self-made millionaires club who was dressed in a head-to-toe in an argyle suit if he was the one who invented that little tab on scotch tape. I was a little bit of a wise guy.

All summer we’d take guests around the harbor — from the West Side Highway and all the way around lower Manhattan to the eastside Hudson up to the Manhattan Bridge and back. It was an amazing time, and I’ll remember it for the rest of my life.

Chris Lazar is a community health resource coordinator with University of Vermont Health - Home Health & Hospice. He has been with us for two years.