Family Brings Food To Queens Hospital That Saved Grandma's Life

ASTORIA, QUEENS — The family of a 75-year-old Queens grandmother delivered food to the hospital workers who saved her life during a weeks-long battle with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

Woodside resident Sonia Atieh spent nearly three weeks at Mount Sinai Queens fighting off the virus, including more than a week on a ventilator in intensive care.

After Atieh recovered and was discharged from the hospital on April 28, her daughter, Tatiana Tsempelis, wanted to do something to thank the health care workers who kept her mother alive.

So Tsempelis and her husband, Pete, started cooking up a plan — literally.

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The couple, who own Mediterranean Diner in Bellmore, Long Island, headed to the kitchen and made meals for doctors and staff at Mount Sinai Queens.

“We don’t save lives, but we do feed people,” Tsempelis told the New York Daily News. “We had to pay it forward somehow. Why not give a piece of our family to them, and thank them through a lunch?”

The family delivered the meals to health care workers with a special thank-you sign from the 6-year-old granddaughter of their former patient: "Thank you for bringing my grandma back home on my 6 birthday."

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