Patch Exclusive: Local Couple Hurt in Marathon Bombing Lucky to Be Alive

By Cassandra Day

They were there for a poignant family celebration. When Amy Garofalo, her husband and boys left Middletown for Boston last Sunday, it was to mark a rebirth — the one-year anniversary of her stem cell transplant.   

“Some patients call it a ‘re-birthday’ or a ‘transplantaversary,’" Amy says. 

At 2:50 p.m. on Monday, the second Boston Marathon explosion at the Forum restaurant on Boylston Street blasted shards of glass into her husband Michael’s head, ruptured both his eardrums, sliced into Amy's face and embedded into her hand.   

“When the first bomb went off, it shook the restaurant. I looked up the street and could see a big cloud of white smoke. In the 10 seconds before the second blast, I thought it couldn’t be something celebratory, it was too scary. There was no way. It was so loud and so powerful,” she says.   

The family was there all day for the Joe Andruzzi Foundation Boston Marathon Watch Party, a fundraiser for cancer patients who have difficulty paying their treatment bills.   

"It was a cool morning and the crowds of people were happily cheering on the runners. There was great energy. We sat outside on the restaurant porch, sometimes kneeling high up on bar stools, ringing cowbells and cheering. We sat close to the road most of the morning,” Amy says.   

Just 10 minutes before the blast, Michael Garafolo and Jakob, 13, were outside on the patio, 10 feet from the mailbox where Dzokhar Tsaranev, 19, placed the backpack containing the second pressure cooker bomb. He never reacted to the first detonation, the FBI says, set by his brother Tamerlan Tsaranev, 26, who died in a massive shootout with police.   

In photographs of the bombing, you can see the portable metal barrier just in front of the Forum, which the restaurant called "ground zero" for the blast on its website, with Michael inside and the man whose both legs were blown off in the blast in the foreground.   

If it wasn’t for Michael checking his cell phone app which tracked when a friend who was running the race, would arrive at the finish line, the family’s injuries would have been much more grave.   

Miraculously, the couple’s children were inside the restaurant on a couch and emerged unscathed.   

Michael and Amy Garofalo, graduates of Coginchaug and Xavier high schools, weren’t so lucky. The blast, said Amy, blew her husband “down like a ragdoll. I landed on the floor in some glass. Then I had the sensation of being dragged out. It was my older son [Ryan, 16] helping me out. I felt blood trickling down my face.”  

Her younger son panicking, Amy’s maternal instincts kicked in. She grabbed her boys and they ran out the back of the Forum in a mass of people scrambling for the exit.    

“It was total chaos and terrifying,” Amy says.   

Bleeding from the head from a six-inch gash and his hearing strained, Michael ran back into the Forum to get Amy’s purse. He immediately began to run back and forth with buckets of ice from the bar and helping the injured until emergency workers arrived. No one in the forum was gravely injured, Amy says, however people did lose their limbs.   

“One man standing on the left side of the mailbox had shrapnel wounds to his face and two others on the right side both lost their legs,” Amy says.   

She and the boys ran four blocks and stopped in a park to regroup. There, a man helped them find Michael at Massachusetts General Hospital, where they were reunited.   

The family was at the Forum for a daylong benefit — a charity close to Amy’s heart. You see, Amy was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow plasma cells last April. After being examined at the Middlesex Oncology group in Middletown, last May, she traveled to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston then endured three months of chemotherapy.

Back home in Middletown on Friday morning, Michael woke Amy with the news one of the marathon bombers was dead and the search was on for the other brother.   

“I had the news on while I was working and by the time I had to go to the Cancer Center for chemo, I was feeling physically ill. They checked my vitals and my blood pressure was high.  I received my chemotherapy and went home,” Amy wrote on her blog on April 21.  

That day, Michael learned from his doctor that both of his eardrums were ruptured from the bomb blast. “By evening on Friday, I felt I needed to get out of my house and away from the news. I was at a friend's house when Michael texted me at 9 p.m., ‘They got him, he is alive. I felt a huge sense of relief and Michael and I, along with the world, rested easier Friday night.”   

Amy is very optimistic, a character trait not unfamiliar to her. “Our cuts and bruises will heal, but the emotional scars will last a long time."  

"My family was so very lucky, so many families lost so much on that day and have a long and challenging road ahead of them.”   

As for luck, a friend told Amy, “you have the worst luck,” however she countered with, “I think it’s good luck,” for her precious family. Michael will get the eight staples out of his head Tuesday and the cuts on Amy’s face are healing. She’s eager to get back to her “normal life,” Amy says, but then added, “my normal life is cancer.” 

Sometimes it’s a struggle to get out of bed, Amy says, “but you have to keep living.” No one, especially children, Amy says, “should have to experience something this senseless and horrifying. My heart goes out to the injured and the families who lost loved ones. Hug your family little tighter tonight and live every day to the fullest.”