Bob Santoro was born in Brooklyn, New York on April 3, 1964. In 1966, they moved to the suburbs of New York City where his parents bought their first home. His father was a hardworking, blue-collar worker as a cement finisher in the union and his mother was a housewife. After high school, Santoro attended a community college and then went on to study architecture at The New York Institute for Technology.
While attending New York Tech, he took a position as a drafts-person and salesman at a local Kitchen and Bath Showroom. After one year of learning the business, he took a position at a new firm that was just opening where he helped them launch their new showroom. After just 6 months, Bob left to start his own design business. For the next five years, he expanded his business, Cold Spring Designs catering to upscale clientele on Nassau County’s prestigious North Shore. In late 1990, he moved to Fairfield County, Connecticut where he purchased his first home.
In early 1991 his life changed when he met the woman of his dreams, Karen Negri. Negri was a graduate of Western Connecticut State University. When they met, she was working full time as a drafts-person at a Connecticut kitchen and bath showroom. Bob and Karen were married in June of 1992 in an incredible, celebrity like, wedding ceremony and reception that took nearly a year to plan. Over the next four years, they continued to build Cold Spring Designs into a million dollar business.
Bob was the lead salesperson for the company and Karen was an incredible artist heading the drafting department. But it was the collaboration of their two individual design talents on their client’s projects which really manifested their reputation as award-winning interior designers.
Their various projects were featured in eleven magazines and their local newspaper. In 1993 the newlyweds also took second place in The National Kitchen and Bath Association’s
National Design Competition. They had an award-winning booth twice yearly at the Fairfield County Home Show.
They spent their weekends either entertaining at home, on their boat or flying to destinations around The Northeast. Bob, who was a pilot since 1985, had a passion for flying.
Near the end of 1995, the couple sold their booming business and headed for a warmer climate. They moved to Atlanta where they immersed themselves in their new business which they desired for quite some time. Almost immediately, they joined the Georgia Real Estate Investors Association. In 1997 Bob was elected Vice President of The Georgia Real Estate Investor’s Association in Atlanta.
This was the largest Real Estate Investors Association in the United States at the time. Bob remodeled a few small investment properties in Suburban Atlanta. He also refurbished one very large total remodel of an investment property in the prestigious community of Buck Head in Atlanta. This 1930’s Country French antique painstakingly took nearly a year to complete.
In late 1997, just two years short of moving to Atlanta, Bob and Karen moved one last time to Santa Barbara, California. There, Bob continued to invest full time in real estate and almost immediately, they began planning a family, which included the adoption of two 6 week old puppies. In September of 1998, they welcomed their first child into the world, Dawson Owen.
They lived an amazing life for five wonderful years as a family of four. But, on Saturday morning, July 1, 2006 life, changed for Bob Santoro in a way he could never have imagined. He lost his beautiful wife Karen of 15 years.
Today, Bob and his son Dawson still live in Santa Barbara where they have started a new life together as father and son. Bob, who continues to invest in Real Estate and is beginning to travel sharing his story with audiences across the country.
He is also writing his first book.
MONTECITO, California, July 1, 2006 — Our family departed from the Santa Barbara Airport en route to our summer home in New Hampshire. We were all aboard our six passenger, private plane. Along with me, a private pilot was my wife Karen (43), our two beautiful sons Dawson (7), Ian (5), and our wonderful dog Lindsey. Less than 30 minutes into the flight, the plane engine began to sputter and the plane began descending. With over 22 years of flight experience, I set the plane down in an orchard. We slid and crashed, the plane soon caught fire. With the exception of my son Dawson and the dog, the rest of us were unconscious. By some miracle, Dawson and our dog Lindsey were able to make it out of the plane almost immediately. Dawson ran and quickly found an orchard worker who pulled me from my pilot’s seat and dragged me away from the plane.
When I came to, I was laying there on the ground with my right leg 95% severed.
As I looked up at the plane I saw my beautiful wife leaning sideways in her second row, unconscious with her beautiful red hair against the window. In the third and last row was my five-year-old son, Ian, screaming at the top of his lungs; “Daddy, Daddy, !!!” Till the day I die, I will remember those scenes, the most painful of my entire life. I was sitting up with my legs straight out in front of me, my right leg hanging off. In total shock looking at the plane in flames that had started at the front and were quickly moving toward the back; “All I could say over and over again; “You’re going to die!!, You’re going to die!!” at the top of my lungs. The flames blazed from the front of the plane to the rear. Passing through an unconscious Karen and leaving Ian motionless, completely blackened with his arms still horizontal. He had screamed until the last second the flames passed through him. Karen and Ian were gone forever…..
Moments later, Dawson and I were airlifted in two separate helicopters to two different hospitals. Dawson was released the next day with no injuries. The doctors at my hospital were not certain that I would survive. They were nearly certain that my leg would need to be amputated. After a week in a comatose state and countless operations, they were able to save my leg. Over the next six months I began learning how to walk again.
I spent nearly the entire month of July in the hospital enduring nearly a dozen operations. I was told there were five to reattach my leg alone. I suffered multiple broken ribs, a broken back which required numerous surgeries. I even had broken front teeth.
At the end of July, I was transported to a rehabilitation hospital. While there I was taken from my room to the Physical Therapy wing twice a day to build my muscles back up and to learn to walk again. I was there for all of August.
Instead of what was to be a beautiful summer with my loving family in the mountains of New Hampshire, I spent July and August in the hospital.
Friends and family waited patiently for me to set the date for their memorial service. But, emotionally, I just couldn’t do it. Physically, I was still in a wheelchair in the rehabilitation hospital. And in my mind, they were home, they weren’t gone, I was going to see them at home when I got out. I was in shock and denial. The service went on without me there. This was by the insistence of my Mother-In-Law who was not willing to wait any longer for her closure.
The day I was finally released from the hospital was also, ironically, the first day of my son’s new school year. He was about to turn eight years old and was just entering the second grade. I returned home in a wheelchair. When I rolled into the empty house, that’s when the true reality hit me. I lost it and cried for the next four years. I cried on the phone, while I was driving, in the supermarket, I even cried in the shower. Most days I cried from the moment I woke up until the moment I went to bed.
If I heard it once, I heard it a million times; “I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re going through” it seemed everyone always said.
As I think back on the incredible 15 years we were together, this memory is what makes this all the more so incredibly difficult.
I am constantly asking myself, as well as God; “Why was it me who survived?” “Why was I the one to live when I was the closest to the impact and the love of my life and our five-year-old miracle were taken from me? “And why, Lord, am I left here to suffer alone and to raise my older son, Dawson all on my own?”