The bakery, which was Arache’s concept, was run as a partnership between Arache and Raul Jimenez, who has been a baker for about two decades. However, the two men had a disagreement and Arache extricated himself from the business last Wednesday.  Arache has not been doing any baking at the store since then.

Meanwhile, Jimenez, who seemed disappointed by Arache’s departure, said that he is now the sole owner and that it will be business as usual. He said Arache didn’t want to be part of the business since it was too tiring for him to run two businesses.

Arache said he will now focus solely on the Sugar Room.

Eighteen-month-old Sunnysider Kyle Fairbanks, who suffered a fractured skull and went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital, has successfully made it through surgery.

However, the extent of any neurological damage has still not been determined.

Approximately 60 people—included a number of young children– attended a prayer vigil at All Saints Church on Saturday night, led by a family friend of the Fairbanks.

Choi Fairbanks, Kyle’s mother, is an organist at the church and the owner of the Sunnyside String School.

Throughout the hour-long vigil friends and fellow parishioners sang hymns, said prayers and lit candles for the family.

“When a terrible tragedy like this happens in our community, it affects us all,” said Father Joseph Jerome.

It was spring-cleaning time on the south side of Queens Blvd. on Saturday.

About 60 people, led by councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, assembled at Thomas P. Noonan Playground (43^rd Street and Greenpoint Ave.) at 12 pm to clean up between 40^th and 50^th Streets on the south side of Queens Blvd. Most were dressed in tatty jeans and T-shirts.

The attendees – many of whom were members of the Sunnyside Woodside Boys & Girls Club, the Grace Fellowship Church to Van Bramer’s entire staff– were split up into teams of about eight. Each group was assigned a territory and cleaned up those streets that cut through Greenpoint, 47^th, 48^th and 50^th Avenues.

Each group was supplied with brooms, gloves and paint (to remove graffiti.). The event ended at 4pm.

“Nothing beats cleaning up your own neighborhood,” Van Bramer said. “We all feel like a million bucks.”

Along the way, some residents pointed out a number of areas they wanted cleaned. This included a wall that was covered with graffiti behind a business on 48^th Avenue between 41^st Street and 42^nd Street.

Van Bramer and members of the Sunnyside Woodside Boys & Girls club painted over the graffiti.

The incident occurred on May 16th at 10:50 pm.

NY1 Follow up, below:

Click on photo

Police were searching Sunday for a man they say forcibly touched a 19-year-old woman late Wednesday in Sunnyside, Queens.

The victim, who asked NY1 to conceal her identity and alter her voice, says she was walking home when the man pinned her against a fence on the corner of 41st Street and 43rd Avenue.

“He grabbed me from behind. He put one of his hands into my pants and I felt that he pulled out his privates,” said the victim.

The woman managed to escape before anything else happened.

“I tried to, like, kick my way out of it, so I kind of stepped on his foot. I tried to use my arms to get away and then I just ran home,” the victim said.

Police are classifying the incident as a forcible touching.

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By Kim Brown Reiner

Now that she is 100, Sunnyside resident Ema Gheraszim-Mailath knows what is important: “stay in good health, love each other, be generous and be peaceful,” she said yesterday, at the apartment on 39th Place she shares with her daughter.

Gheraszim-Mailath celebrated becoming a centenarian at Bucharest Restaurant on May 12 with 70 guests, including relatives who traveled from Romania, an opera singer, her doctors and Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer, who gave her a proclamation “for such an extraordinary life.”

And an extraordinary life it’s been.

Gheraszim-Mailath was born to a Hungarian father and Romanian mother in Banska-Bystrica, Slovakia two years before World War I began. The war caused her family to flee to Transylvania.

After the war, her family was able to travel frequently to Budapest, visiting her father’s side of the family. But World War II destroyed their freedom.

It also ruined Gheraszim-Mailath’s hopes of earning a university degree; instead she got married in Transylvania and had three children: Angela Pieter, with whom she lives, a son who lives in the same building and an elder daughter who passed away nearly a dozen years ago. Of that experience she said, “maybe God gave me so much joy to forget such a great pain.”

Thinking about her deceased daughter still makes her cry.

Otherwise Gheraszim-Mailath is joyful and thankful for the blessings she has been given. What happened 98 years ago is as vivid in her mind as what happened yesterday, she said.

After World War II ended the communists took over and nationalized private property. Her husband, who worked as an engineer in a British factory, lost his job and the family lost everything. Mailath went to work in a factory at the age of 45, rising at 4:30 in the morning to travel two hours and work an eight hour shift. Life continued like that for 16 years.

She eventually followed her daughters to Bucharest and then to Baltimore at the age of 77. In 2000 she moved to Sunnyside.

“I like it here very much,” she said about her adopted home. “I can take walks, go out to all the shops and buy things.”

When asked what type of shopping she does, Gheraszim-Mailath rummaged through a shopping bag near her living room couch and presented this interviewer with a purple scarf. “I give it to you to remember an old hag of 100,” she said.

In addition to shopping, she attends Queen of Angels Roman Catholic Church and St. Nicholas Romanian Orthodox Church, prays, exercises and watches Turner Classic Movies, although she speaks little English. This summer she will be making one of her frequent trips to Romania.

Keeping active, she said, is the key to living a long life, which is why she cooks, but does not clean. “Activity keeps you healthy, cleaning doesn’t,” she said.

In fact, she is so healthy the only medicine she takes is an aspirin a day.

Gheraszim-Mailath keeps up with current events and marvels at the changes she has seen. “The pocket phone is amazing,” she said. “There were only horse-drawn carriages and now we travel by plane.”

Yet the changes she has lived through have not all been for the better. “There are so many things that could go wrong; the earth could easily be destroyed. There is too much fighting. It would be nice to have peace, but there will not be peace,” she said.

Still, she does not dwell on such dark thoughts. “Whatever I can, I still do to participate, to continue with this life,” she said. “I enjoy being alive and being surrounded by people who are so nice.”

Suspects

The police are searching for two suspects who are wanted in connection with a robbery that occurred on the border of Sunnyside and Woodside at about 7pm on Friday, May 11.

The police said that two men approached a woman who was walking home, grabbed her around the neck and removed her iPhone before throwing her to the ground. The incident occurred in the vicinity of 50th Street and 43rd Avenue.

The victim sustained minor injuries to her neck and shoulder.

The suspects are described as being M/H’s, 15-20 years old, 5’7″ and 150 lbs.

Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477).  All calls are confidential.

An 18-month-old baby boy was seriously injured Thursday night after taking a 13-foot fall off a second-story patio of a Sunnyside home, fire and police officials said.

The infant made his way through a partially-open screen door in the back of the 43rd St. building in Sunnyside onto a balcony and scaled a 3-foot wrought iron fence, neighbors said.

He tumbled over and smashed his head when he landed on a concrete stoop down below, the FDNY said.

Neighbor Nancy Sasso, 34, a data clerk entry and a mother of two, saw emergency workers rush the baby out of the backyard.

“His head was covered with bandages and you could see his tummy rise and fall,” she said. “It’s just a freak accident.”

The boy went into cardiac arrest en route to Elmhurst Hospital Center after the 8:46 p.m. incident, fire officials said.

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