After tragedy, hope and help for cop and his family in Baldwin
Esther Veve told scores of people assembled Tuesday on the street outside the Baldwin home she shares with her husband, NYPD Det. Dalsh Veve and their young daughter, Darshee, "I thought I was prepared for this day."
Fighting back the tears, she looked out at about 100 people, which included officials from the NYPD, as well as the police departments of Nassau County, Freeport and Rockville Centre, and representatives from the Baldwin and Levittown fire departments and EMS.
Bagpipers played and a motorcade of police, other first responders and a few sports cars slowly paraded down her block.
The buzz of activity was part of a Tunnel to Towers Foundation ceremony to mark the completion of a two-car garage addition behind the Veve home. The addition provides space outfitted as a physical therapy room for Det. Veve — who suffered a catastrophic injury in the line of duty in 2017.
Tunnel to Towers also presented the family with a ceremonial key, a symbolic gesture indicating the foundation paid off the mortgage on the Veve family home in 2020.
"Thank you Tunnel to Towers for the mortgage-free home and the addition," Esther Veve said. She also praised NYPD officials for their help in assisting her husband, as well as the builders.
"I see this addition as a new chapter in this journey of ours we call life," she said. "This new physical therapy room will essentially be the hub of the home."
She added: "Being mortgage-free feels like a burden has been lifted off my shoulders … No more monthly payment reminders." Veve, a nurse, said it brings "peace of mind," knowing she has the option of taking off from work, "as I often have to," to care for her husband.
Frank Siller, Tunnel to Towers Foundation chairman and chief executive, said of the Veve family in an interview: "They don't have to take hours or a half-hour or 45 minutes, whatever, to get to a location to get the physical therapy. It gives him back great independence. That's what these smart homes — the technology we put in the homes is all about — to give them back some of their independence."
Esther Veve also talked about the journey she and her husband have taken since he nearly died in 2017 after a driver he had stopped in Brooklyn suddenly pulled away, dragging the detective for two blocks. Dalsh Veve spent months in a coma.
As her husband looked on from his wheelchair Tuesday, Esther Veve talked about the "six major surgeries" he endured over the space of a week in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Those medical issues followed almost a year of intense physical therapy.
"I don't think anyone could've predicted that Dalsh would be here today," she said, adding that she leaned on her faith.
She also wanted people to know more about her husband.
He came to the United States from Haiti as a teenager. She said the couple attended high school together. He earned a bachelor of science degree in anthropology, biology and chemistry in 2007.
"He would later give the diploma to his mother, since she wanted him to be a premed major. However, Dalsh had other passions," Veve said of her husband, who joined the NYPD in January, 2008.
Meanwhile, his colleagues at the ceremony praised him for the courage he has exemplified throughout the ordeal.
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'No one wants to pay more taxes than they need to' Nearly 20,000 Long Islanders work in town and city government. A Newsday investigation found a growing number of them are making more than $200,000 a year. NewsdayTV's Andrew Ehinger reports.
