Ellen Yan

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Shayla Lee Colon |Ellen Yan

Cecilio Adames met up with five friends Sunday morning at a dock in Howard Beach, Queens. The group planned to go fishing on a boat one of them owned. It was not fishing season, and the air was a frigid 36 degrees, but Mr. Adames was "excited" to be going out in good company, his daughter Alisha Adames, 16, said. Hours later, detectives knocked on the family's door. The boat had capsized and Mr. Adames was at a Staten Island hospital, they said. When the family got there, the police said he was dead.

Jan 11, 2025 | newsday.com | Ellen Yan

After a car crash at age 14, Lillian Huie Lam reluctantly went back to school, worked in the family restaurant and endured a woman’s scream at the sight of her. She was the girl without a nose. "That caused her to be even more shy," said daughter Gwen Young, of Huntington.

Jan 8, 2025 | newsday.com | Ellen Yan

Almost everyone called her "mamanina," and Pedrina Villalobos acted as the mother, first in war-torn El Salvador and then on bountiful Long Island, her family said. Her way of mothering was presenting her home-cooked deliciousness — cheese and pork-filled pupusas, tortillas, chicken soup — not just to family but neighbors and anybody else around, relatives said.

Jan 7, 2025 | newsday.com | Ellen Yan

Melissa Meris lifts weights while perching on her foot in a dancer’s pose, then maneuvers a ball with her feet before holding a knees-bent pose at the ballet barre. "Every single muscle in my body is shaking right now," Meris, 41, a swim school owner from East Meadow,  says during her Barre class at the Life Time fitness club in Uniondale.

Jan 6, 2025 | newsday.com | Ellen Yan

Santo “Sandy” Minutoli grew up playing stickball in the streets of Brooklyn; survived World War II on a fuel tanker in the Pacific; built schools and government buildings; and thrived in a series of blue collar and Civil Service jobs, learning skills that helped three generations of his family. As his family saw it, Minutoli was truly a member of the Greatest Generation.