Cooking up a cure - for his eyesight

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) - A medical blind-side is not stopping a local man from holding onto one of the most dangerous professions out there. Now, he's using one passion to preserve another.

Providence firefighter Dan Rinaldi was diagnosed with Keratoconus in 2005. It's a progressive condition that leaves his right eye in a worsening, blurry fog.

Also on the Web:

• Keratoconus: from Wikipedia
• National Keratoconus Foundation

"I can't even see the camera," Rinaldi, 43, says with a laugh. "A lot of the environments we work in are pitch black with smoke down to the floor. So, I can't see whether I have no vision or 20/20 vision."

Blurry vision or not, he's a first responder on Providence's Special Hazards 1, a roller coaster rescue ride to adrenaline-pumping but tragic scenes -- like a recent crash on the Point Street Bridge.  

"One survived and one didn't," he said. "So you're happy about the one who survived. And the one who didn't, you just wish you had the opportunity to change the outcome because that's what we do on this truck."

Rinaldi won commendations with the Hazards 1 team, but it is skill in the kitchen that brought home his most recent firehouse cooking award.

Now, he's going to use a $10,000 prize from a Hood New England Dairy cookoff earlier this month to pay one of the best eye surgeons in the world to clear the fog. (Try Dan's winning recipe, Surf and Turf Sliders with Maine Lobster Sauce, here.)

"I'm very excited to think about it, but I've been without the sight in my eye for so long, I don't want to get my hopes up. I know it's not a magic wand," Rinaldi said.

Rinaldi refuses to see his condition as a disability, hearing instead the voice of his grandfather, Pvt. Edward Tavarozzi. He was almost crushed on a World War II battlefield, but he recovered and went back to active duty.

"I have no intentions on taking a disability pension. In fact, if both or my arms and legs were cut off, I'm hopping to work, because I can just hear my grandfather asking me, why didn't you make it to work today?"

The goal is to get the operation as early as February -- in what could be the best $10,000 he's ever seen -- and spent.