A single mother of six who is out of work from a Villages restaurant because of the Coronavirus lost everything in a house fire on Easter Sunday.
The blaze destroyed the single-wide mobile home in Wildwood where Mary Recchia, general manager of the Cody’s Original Roadhouse in Brownwood, lived with her children. No one was injured in the early Sunday afternoon fire in the single-wide mobile home.
The structure, which included an addition on the back of it, was fully involved in flames when firefighters from The Villages and Sumter County arrived on scene shortly after 1:15 p.m. The cause of the blaze remains under investigation.
Brian Mann, a bartender at the popular eatery, set up a GoFundMe account to help Recchio and her children. Recchio isn’t working right now because all three Cody’s locations in The Villages were shut down on March 20 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cody’s owner/operator, Allen Musikantow, said Recchia is a longtime employee who started out as a server and worked her way up. He made a $1,000 donation to the GoFundMe effort on Monday morning to help jumpstart the effort to help Recchia get back on her feet.
“She lost everything,” Musikantow said.
On Monday afternoon, Cody’s employees received an email asking them to contribute to the GoFundMe effort for Recchia. It said all donations would be used for clothing shoes, beds, window air conditioning units, games for her children and any other essential items that were needed.
The GoFundMe page for Recchia can be accessed by clicking HERE. Shortly after the email went out to Cody’s employees on Monday morning, the donations jumped from $1,150 to $2,350. By Monday afternoon, 74 people had contributed $6,525 toward the $10,000 goal.
Mann also posted a plea on his Facebook page for beds or cots, a window air conditioning unit and clothing items for the entire Recchia family. The items and sizes needed are:
- Men’s size 36-32 pants and large shirts, size 112 shoes;
- Men’s size 36-31 pants and extra-large shirts, size 13 shoes;
- Men’s size 32-32 pants and medium shirts, size 10 shoes;
- Boy’s size 10 pants and large youth shirts, size 7 shoes;
- Boy’s size 8 pants and med youth shirts, size 5 shoes;
- Girl’s size 10 pants and large youth shirts, size 7 shoes; and
- Women’s size 8 to 10 pants/shorts and medium tops.
