Transcript

#62 Stefano: The Boy on the Plane She Could Never Forget | Heavyweight Podcast

From Heavyweight · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 34 min · 4,739 words · 102 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "#62 Stefano: The Boy on the Plane She Could Never Forget | Heavyweight Podcast", an episode of Heavyweight published October 17, 2025 (34 min, about 4,739 words). It mentions 5 people, works and ideas, including Stephano, Anita, Jonathan Goldstein, Eastria, Adriatic Sea.

What this episode is about

The content explores the story of Debbie and her mother Anita, highlighting Anita’s unwavering optimism and impactful presence in Debbie’s life. Through anecdotes, including Debbie’s reflections on her mother's nurturing spirit, the narrative delves into themes of familial love and the complexities of relationships.

Key takeaways

  • When using friends, remember: it's a two-way street, not a superhighway for convenience.
  • Eternal optimism might mask trauma—Anita's cheerful facade hid years of hardship and loss.
  • In relationships, being the 'user' can make you both the villain and the victim.
  • Grief has no expiration date; Anita's bond with Stephano lasted well beyond their fleeting encounter.
  • Freedom may cost everything; for Anita, it meant leaving her heart behind in a single flight.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Adriatic Sea, Eastria, Jonathan Goldstein, Stephano
  2. – 10:00: Stephano
  3. – 15:00: Stephano
  4. – 20:00: Stephano
  5. – 30:00: Stephano
  6. – 33:53: Jonathan Goldstein, Stephano

Notable quotes from "#62 Stefano: The Boy on the Plane She Could Never Forget | Heavyweight Podcast"

  • From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight.
    about Jonathan Goldstein · at
  • Anita grew up in a part of Italy called Eastria. And after World War II, the region was seated to Yugoslavia.
    about Eastria · at
  • It's Anita. And you have a I got picture of a little baby Stephano.
    about Stephano · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

Places & events

  • Eastria — Place · 1 mention · first at
  • Adriatic Sea — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Double layered their clothing, borrowed a motorboat, and sailed into the Adriatic Sea. Anita could easily have drowned.

Full transcript with timestamps

Pushkin. Hey, Tony. Karen. Just in the grocery store. I'm I'm I'm sorry to be intruding like this, you know, just calling up out of the

Oh, hi. Oh, hi. Sorry. My mom called on the other line and I So then you just you just drop whoever you're talking to.

That's the kind of daughter I am. Not very professional, but okay. Oh, is this business?

Yes, it actually is. Um Okay. Well, because you know, you're a you're a dear friend of Jackie, so I thought maybe, you know, I would turn to you. I I with my concern. I I've been trying to call Jackie and she doesn't seem to be accepting my phone calls. Um, yeah. No, I could confirm that she's okay. Okay. And um

Oh, that's good. Thank Thank God. Yeah, I could confirm that. And I can confirm that um she's annoyed by your persistence. That I could confirm.

Okay. And it's I I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. Maybe she just feels that you're using her.

Well, I am. Well, maybe she doesn't like that. Yeah, because she wants to be the user, right?

That's an excellent point you've got there. Okay, Jackie, if you're out there listening, which let's face it, you're probably not.

If I am using you, it's on behalf of America and Canada. Of course. From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight. Today's episode, Stephano. Right after the break. It's impossible to talk to Debbie without hearing stories about her mom, Anita. Anita was Italian and in every story, it's her atmo ferroche or fierce optimism that takes center stage.

Truly for her, the glass was beyond half full. It was always full. Even if there was a drop of water in there, Jonathan, it was just always full. As an example, Debbie tells the story of how Anita comforted some cousins who were concerned their child was crying too much.

And my mom said, "No, you don't have to worry. She's like me. I I was like that for years. I was always crying very easily." My mom was around 78 years old at the time. And they said, "Did you grow out of it?" And my mom goes, "Yeah." And they said, "When?" And she said, "About 2 years ago." So, you know,

they had something to hope for. Anita died in 2020 and her death was hard on Debbie. She misses her mom a lot and thinks about her a lot. And perhaps because of this, she finds herself returning to the one Anita story that has yet to find its happy ending. And that is the story of the airplane and the baby. Anita grew up in a part of Italy called Eastria. And after World War II, the region was seated to Yugoslavia. Suddenly, her family was under oppressive socialist rule. So, Anita and her brother hatched an escape plan. They double layered their clothing, borrowed a motorboat, and sailed into the Adriatic Sea. Anita could easily have drowned.

But my mom said, "You know, you're young, and you don't think about that kind of stuff. You just think about freedom." Anita and her brother made it to Italy where the police took them to a refugee camp. In the coming years, Anita would live in several such camps. When I would talk to her other friends about it, her friends would say, "Oh, it was hard. You know, it was the food wasn't good most of the time and we didn't have money." But you would never have known that talking to her. She was just eternally optimistic. She said, "It was wonderful. They opened the doors and I saw so many people that I knew there.

We'd play cards and we'd drink and, you know, the girls would do each other's hair and just had fun.

In 1959, Anita got her chance to leave the camps, a visa to the United States. And so, all alone, Anita set out to America.

So, she was getting ready to get on the flight from Rome to New York. And there was an adoption agency that were taking children from orphanages from Italy to the United States. And they asked my mom if she would babysit this little boy, this little 2-year-old boy. And she said, "Of course."

Did she learn his name? Stefano. It's Anita. And you have a I got picture of a little baby Stephano.

This is Anita in a video Debbie filmed a year before her mom's death. In the video, Anita is clutching a photograph taken during the flight.

He's so cute. Look at how beautiful he is. Stephano. The photograph is oddly composed, almost like it was taken by accident when the camera was set down. Anita and Stephano's faces are both partially cut off, but you can tell that Anita is smiling big with the 2-year-old Stephano peaceful in her arms.

How old were you there? 24. Look at how beautiful. 60 years ago. 1959. And it was a long flight to New York and they had to stop three times to refuel. So for 18 hours, Anita held Stephano close.

I think she just fell in love with him. She just fell in love with that little baby. She said he was the best baby you could ever see.

How good baby he was. He was the best baby. He was very happy. I was happy. A little baby was happy. It was Anita's first time on an airplane and Stephanos's too. They were both leaving behind everyone they knew and setting out alone for a new life in America. Clutching this baby over the ocean, the two of them smiling at each other. Anita and Stephano bonded. They were both off to what she hoped was a better life. They get to New York, she was holding the baby and the agency came up to her and then just took him right out of her arms. She said they didn't say anything to her.

They just take him away from me and he started crying because he don't know nobody.

There was no chance to even say goodbye and I was crying with him. I will cry now too.

Yeah, of course. That's sad. It was like my baby. She would cry. She would cry when she'd talk about it.

Even after raising two kids of her own, Anita never stopped talking about the child who was hers for a day. All through her life, even into her last years, everyone heard about Stephano. Anita continued to hope, always needed to believe that Stephano's life was a good one. She would say, "I wonder where he is. Was he in a good home? What was his life like?

I would like to know him and see how he's doing. I'm sorry, baby. You are far away. I don't know where are you." I was thinking all this year about him all the time.

Yeah. And I love you even if I don't see you too long. That's a nice story. And uh I don't know if you understand it.

I think so. Back when Anita was still alive, there were several attempts at finding Stephano. Anita sought out help from various friends and family, but no one was able to get anywhere. They even looked into a TV show that reunited adopes with their birth parents, but Anita wasn't Stephano's birth parent. But then one day, Debbie brought up the subject of Stephano with her close friend Lindsay.

Lindsay starts plugging stuff into the computer, and she said, "Oh, I found him." Hang on. But you didn't did you even have his last name?

No. And who is this Lindsay? Does she work for the State Department or something?

You would think. As someone who makes his living tracking people down like a nice version of Dog the Bounty Hunter, a dog the bounty hunter who rather than dragging people off to jail, drags them off to heal. I'm professionally peeked by this Lindsay. I have a skill for finding digital footprints of people.

This is Lindsay. I'm the person that people go to if they want to know something.

The only information she knew about Stephano was his age and the date of the flight. But with that, she found Stephano's immigration record, which had the name of the man on it who was set to adopt him. From there, Lindsay found the adoptive father's obituary. Under the list of surviving children, there was the name Steven. And we know we put that together

as as Stephano. As Stephano in America, Stephano became Steven. Although Lindsay now had Stephano's full name, she had no way of getting in touch with him. She combed social media, but he was nowhere to be found. She did find his two brothers, though, so she messaged one. He said that it was a very nice story, but he doesn't speak to Steven anymore.

Yeah. And when Lindsay tried the other brother, it was basically the same thing. Um that they don't speak either.

And then Lindsay dug a little deeper and it looked like he might have a a criminal record.

Debbie and Lindsay couldn't see what Steven's criminal record was. It just came up as a flag on one of those people finding websites. But the reality of what they were doing suddenly sank in. They were looking for a potentially dangerous stranger to introduce to the elderly Anita and it gave them pause.

That paired with I'm not speaking to his brothers. We just we weren't sure if maybe this was our safest way to go about this and we wanted to take some time to kind of figure out a game plan. But time passed and no game plan emerged. And a year later, Anita died, never having gotten to reunite with Stephano.

After the loss of a parent, there's often an attempt to honor a final wish, donating to a beloved cause or scattering ashes in a favorite place. But Debbie feels a need to fulfill a different kind of wish. on her mother's behalf. She wants to know that Stephano is okay.

Anita's death was very, very, very difficult. And I think it's healing for Debbie if we find him. And I think that she needs this more than she thinks she does.

Lindsay says Debbie never got the chance to fully grieve Anita. After she died, CO hit. Then her father developed dementia and Debbie became his full-time caretaker. Then her father died. just always on to this next draining thing, you know, and since it is honoring this wish of her mom, it's helping her heal. And I can just see that when we talk about the story. She's so hopeful and she's so determined. And this is something that I haven't seen with Debbie in a very long time.

And for Debbie, she hopes this story might mean something to Stephano, too. Maybe he needs to know that this woman thought of him for most of his life, loving him from a distance, wondering about him, praying for him. I mean, what a thing to know.

After the break, let's find him. Let's find that guy. That little Stephano. So,

so here we are. Here we are. My producer, Kala Holt, and I gather in the studio. Our mission is twofold. We want to find a way to contact Steven, but before we do, we want to figure out what Steven's mysterious criminal record actually is. Kala starts tip-tapping away on her computer, while I settle in and offer the kind of input that only an investigative journalist with a decadesl long track record can. I've gone through different phases in my life where a V-neck was more appealing than a crew neck. It kind of goes, it's always darkest before the dawn. Is that true?

And I was like to Aug, I was like, "Smell how good that is." And he was like, "That smells disgusting." I was like, "I can think of other times when it's darker. It's probably darker at night. My gal don't do much talking dances, even when she's walking and Oh, look at that little squirrel."

Oh, here's criminal traffic. And then finally, we find the record we've been looking for.

DUI. Uh, okay. In 1989. That was a long time ago. So, there's really no other criminal past except to

That's all I'm seeing. Boy, that's sad that that was enough to kind of uh make them drop the whole thing.

Yeah. Please leave your message for five. Kala digs up some possible phone numbers for Steven online. And in the weeks to come, I leave numerous voicemails.

Hi there. Uh, I'm looking for a Steven. I call so many numbers I hear automated messages entirely new to me. The number is in service.

Is in service. Try your call again. None of these phone numbers lead me to Steven. They just lead me to different robotic voices.

Your call cannot. All right. That's it. Yeah. With the telephone having crapped on our heads, we decide that what we need is an even older form of communication. The US Postal Service. Kala uncovers three possible mailing addresses for Steven. So we write three letters and drop them in the mailbox, letting them fly off into the world like three hopeful birds. And then time, as is its want, passes. Two years go by. Two years. It's unlikely the average podcast listener's brain raised on podcasts about celebs, elk stake, and the science of why people go to the bathroom, can easily conceptualize the passage of so much time. If this was a video podcast, I'd stare into the camera with my patented dead pan affect as my beard and fingernails grew in time lapse. But since it isn't a video podcast, I present to you an aoponic aid.

That was only 10 seconds. Now imagine 2 years. 2 years of refreshing my inbox and calling my answering service to no avail. And then Debbie and I check back in. Where are you right now? It appears that you have a ladder behind you. Yes, I'm at home.

And where does this ladder lead to? Oh, nowhere. It's justhere. We're going nowhere with this ladder.

I hope we're going somewhere with this story. I hope we're not on a ladder to nowhere. It seems Debbie hasn't given up on Stephano. She tells me Lindsay found some of the same phone numbers we did. So, Debbie, too, tried calling and leaving messages. No one ever called back, though. Still, Debbie wants to keep trying. And so more letters are sent, more voicemails left, and two more months go by. I've completely given up hope. And then one afternoon, I finally hear from Steven.

You did? I did. You did? I did. Wow. Yeah. I'm shocked. I wasn't holding out a lot of hope.

Me either. I tell Debbie about the phone call, how Steven told me he dismissed my letters as a scam. I asked if he'd be open to a conversation with Debbie, but he said he doesn't have transportation. And when I said we could do a video call, he said he hasn't a cell phone nor a computer and he quote doesn't follow the internet. But eventually he said he'd be okay with a telephone call.

I would love that. I think it's a gift that he doesn't realize, you know. So he is available 1:00 green mountain time. So that would be like Oh, sorry. Mountain time. Mountain time, not Green Mountain time. After the break, Stephano at long last. Is Green Mountain time a thing?

Sounds like a coffee thing to me. That That would be 3:00 Nest Cafe. So 1:00 Green Mountain. The next day at 100 p.m. Green Mountain time, Debbie and I convene. Um, okay. I'll give him a call. I I'll phone him. I'll and I'll introduce you guys.

Okay. Okay. Hello. Hello, Stephen. Yes. Hi, it's Jonathan phoning. I I'm here with Debbie.

Oh, you are? Hi, Stephen. How are you? I'm fine. How are you? I'm good. I'm really good. And I'm really excited to hear your voice and to know that you're here right now.

So, um, Stephen, my mom, um, her name was Anita. And Debbie lays it all out for Steven. The plane ride, the love Anita felt for him, and how that love endured for Anita's entire life. You were always on her mind for for many many years and told many people about you.

Well, God bless your mom. I wish she would have adopted me. I think she would have liked that, too.

Anita always wanted to know whether after being taken from her arms, Stephano's life had been a good one. So we start at the beginning with Steven's adoption.

My foster parents told me roughly at the age of eight. You call them your foster parents. Did they adopt you?

Yes. Were they good people? I mean there was three squares a day. I mean there was no abuse or anything like that. I don't mind. Uh, lickens is what my dad called it.

Did you say lickens? Um, yeah. The belt, it wasn't abuse. It was just for discipline purposes.

Was that Was that rough? Well, for a little kid it is. Did Did you But did you feel loved? Yes, I did. Oh, I remember from childhood other than friends and they turned out to be drug addicts, I turned out nominal.

Wh What do you mean when you say nominal? Well, I have a serious alcohol problem.

Okay. I know. I sound like I've been drinking, but I haven't. I don't anything here. I was pretty much known as a boozer.

Back in the day, Steven says, the drinking got bad, which led to the DUI. You don't think when you drink to get behind a wheel of a vehicle drunk is preposterous.

Did your father Did your adopted father do something similar? He drank, but not in excess. I never saw him on a drunken stouper. Well, nobody's ever seen me. I won't let them.

Yeah. So, you you drink alone? Yes. That song by uh that one guy, George Thurood, I drink alone, reminds me of me.

As the conversation goes on, Debbie grows increasingly quiet, so I do my best to draw Steven out. Did you Did you get married?

No, I never been married. I've had relationships, but they come and go. Would you say that you um that you've been in love?

I've been infatuated, put it that way. And I lived with a lady for many years, but that was back in the 80s.

What What can you say about her? Joanne uh she died of lung cancer and I lived with her for like nine years.

Oh boy. Did she did she pass away while you were living together? Yeah. Oh, that that that must have been hard.

Yeah, it was. But I moved on. Steven tells us that he was in the Navy for 4 years, that he missed Vietnam by just a month. Most of his professional life was spent working in factories. I ask him about his brothers, why they no longer speak, but he says nothing in particular happened. They just drifted. Overall, he says his life has been nominal and fortunate. When I ask how so, he cites the fact that he's never been homeless, although there was a brief period in 2014 when he ended up in a veteran shelter. He was fine, he says, except for the fact that he couldn't control the heat or the air conditioning. And shortly after that, he moved into a room in his friend Carl's house, which is where he is now.

I took a video of her telling the story. I don't know if you're interested in hearing it. Um,

Debbie wants Steven to hear what he meant to Anita in Anita's own words. In response, Steven says that he doesn't have access to a car right now. Plus, he's sick in bed. I assume he thinks we're asking him to go somewhere, so I try again to explain. Um, we could try to play a little bit of the video over the phone so that you can hear Anita's voice.

Um, not right now. Um, I'm good. Uh, it's no misunderstanding. Steven doesn't want to hear Anita. Still, Debbie tries to explain her mom's feelings for the baby she held during that flight to America. I think in some ways she felt like sympathetical with you, you know, like sympathetic with you that you were both leaving your homeland.

I mean, is it strange to think that as a baby you were able to have such a strong effect on somebody?

Well, uh, I don't think of it as that, but Well, how do you think of it? That could be anything. Like I love this little toddler, you know? I love pizza.

It could be anything. The conversation feels like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. If it's a battle between optimism and pessimism, it feels like pessimism is winning. It was surprising to get the letter and I thought, what are these people doing?

Yeah. I just felt like it was a gift. Okay, thank you. Yeah. Um, I'm a little old now to be concerned. Do Do you feel like it's too late?

Yeah, I do. That baby Stephano doesn't exist anymore. When he was taken out of Anita's arms, he became Steven. And Steven is a 68-year-old man dealing with ill health. The feelings of a stranger who encountered him for one day as a toddler seem largely irrelevant. Debbie wanted to give Stephano a gift, but Steven doesn't want that gift.

I'm going to have to uh discharge now, so I'm going to leave you folks be. Before he goes though, Steven asks if we could mail him a copy of the photograph of Anita and him on the plane.

Mail that to me? Yeah, please. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. It was so nice talking to you. I really appreciate you taking the time. I wish you the best. I wish you well.

Okay. Thank you. After we hang up, Debbie and I sit in silence for a moment. Yeah. H yeah,

it's hard to know what to make of any of it. On the one hand, Steven's reaction is reasonable. It is strange to be called up by the daughter of a woman you spent one day with when you were a 2-year-old. In some ways, the story of Anita and Stephano was an easier one to tell when it was incomplete. A woman immigrates with a baby and thinks about him for the rest of her life. And then what? The baby becomes a man and doesn't care. The man who was once the baby faces hardship. Nice anecdotes become harder to sum up when you involve the lives of real people.

He took it differently than I thought. Definitely took it differently than I thought. It just I think the part that makes me cry a little bit is that he didn't want to hear my mom. Yeah. But you can't make people, you know, see things the way you see them.

You can never assume a gift, you know. Debbie is disappointed, though. Not just because of what she wanted and didn't get, but because of what she did get. While our picture of Steven's life is fragmented, the details he shared contained a lot of sorrow. And I don't know how my mom I think maybe how would it have been for her if she would have actually met him or talked to him. You know, maybe it's better that I did.

How do you how do you think she would have dealt with it? Like what do you think she would have said to him?

Oh, she would have told him she loved him. She probably would have invited him over.

Really? She would have figured out a way to feed him. My mom loved deeply. Yeah, she really loved people deeply. The love that was more than pizza. Um, he can't I don't think he could even comprehend it. I think most people couldn't comprehend that.

In that video of Anita, the one that Steven didn't want to hear, there's a moment where Anita wonders if she's being understood.

That's a nice story. And I don't know if you understand it. I think so. When I first saw it, I assumed she was referring to her accent or less than perfect English. But now I wonder if there was something more behind it. We live our lives in the desperate hope that if we find the right words, tell the story the right way, our love will be understood. We will be understood. We hope even as we misconstrue and grow offended and talk past each other, we hope love, some iota of it, will get through. Even though time and time again, we're disappointed.

The next time I speak with Debbie, she tells me how the night after her call with Steven, she woke up at 3:00 a.m. from a bad dream. She got out of bed and went downstairs. It was pouring outside, and Debbie thought about Stephano, the boy her mother held on the airplane back in 1959. and she thought about the man she spoke to on the phone 65 years later and she thought about her mom and she grieved crying for about an hour. Maybe this will plant a seed for Steven. Debbie tells me after all he did seem to really want that photograph. Maybe someday he'll look back at the thing she was trying to tell him and he'll finally feel that love from her mother. It seems like an unlikely hope. But in this way, Debbie is like her mom.

Now that the furnace richer returning to its goodwill home. Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damaged deposit, take this moment to decide. If we meant it, if we tried or felt around for far too much from things that accidentally died. This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Kala Hol and me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Phoebe Flanigan. Our supervising producer is Stevie Lane. Editorial guidance from Emily Condan. Special thanks to Ben Natafhaffrey, Lucy Sullivan, and Trina Manino. Emma Munger mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K. Samson, and Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by Blue Dot Sessions, Saigon Woodby Soul, and Katie Mullins. Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans, courtesy of Epitap Records. Follow us on Instagram at heavyweight podcast or email us at heavyweight@pushkin.fm.

Tune in next week for a special Pushkin Anthology show about mistakes with the hosts of Risky Business, Cautionary Tales, and Heavyweight. Hey, that's me.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "#62 Stefano: The Boy on the Plane She Could Never Forget | Heavyweight Podcast"?

Jonathan Goldstein (Host), Debbie (Guest), Steven (Guest), Lindsay (Guest), Kala Holt (Guest).

What is "#62 Stefano: The Boy on the Plane She Could Never Forget | Heavyweight Podcast" about?

The content explores the story of Debbie and her mother Anita, highlighting Anita’s unwavering optimism and impactful presence in Debbie’s life. Through anecdotes, including Debbie’s reflections on her mother's nurturing spirit, the narrative delves into themes of familial love and the complexities of relationships.

What is mentioned in this Heavyweight episode?

5 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Stephano, Anita, Jonathan Goldstein, Eastria, Adriatic Sea. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#62 Stefano: The Boy on the Plane She Could Never Forget | Heavyweight Podcast"?

The episode runs 34 min; the transcript is about 4,739 words in 102 timestamped sections.

More from Heavyweight

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.