By: E&P Staff It seemed like a good idea at the time. Sam Patalino, 78, appeared to be a good man for one of those holiday season "neediest-cases" series, this one promoted by the Albany (N.Y.) Times-Union.
Until he turned out to be a registered sex offender.
On Wednesday, the Times Union ran a lengthy profile on Patalino of nearby Latham. The former nightclub singer now lives on just over $800 a month. Later in the day it learned he is a Level Two sex offender.
Patalino assaulted a ten-year-old boy in 1991, police records showed. The newspaper learned of this after a reader called the newsroom.
Times Union Editor Rex Smith said in a statement the newspaper will screen Holiday Fund profile candidates more carefully from now on.
Erin Stachewicz of Colonie's Senior Resources Department, which referred Patalino to the Times Union, said the department had not known his status at the time. The agency does not run criminal record checks on the people it helps, she told the newspaper.
"A senior in need is a senior in need,'' she said.
"The Times Union Holiday Fund helps thousands of poor older people in our community, regardless of their backgrounds or personal circumstances,'' Smith said in a statement Wednesday. "That sort of generosity is a fundamental teaching of most religious traditions.''
He added, "I wish we hadn't spotlighted a sex offender, and we will more carefully screen the names forwarded to us as profile candidates in the future. But I don't think our readers would want us to reserve our charity only for those who are without blemish.''
The paper's profile had noted: "He greeted a reporter with a stack of stale wheat bread slices in one hand, bread he chucked into the back yard for the birds. He gave up lifting weights, but his mouth still gets a good workout.
"'I brush my teeth with gun powder," he says, "and shoot my mouth off all day.'"
Marriage? "That's something Patalino, the son of Italian immigrants, never did.
"Nowadays, he spends a lot of time watching a wood-encased television he bought for $20 from the Salvation Army. He especially likes the news, but also biographical shows. If he were to get something this holiday season, a new TV to replace his old clunker would make quite a present....
"There's another thing he dreams about. Something that, compared with his Radio Shack tape recorder, is a little ... well ... extravagant. But something that would let him make such music!
"A karaoke machine."
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