“It’s like an analogy for cancer,” Cohen said. The ride became an invigorating exercise in giving long odds and doubts a middle finger, too. He was chased by a golden retriever for a mile in Texas, where a police officer pulled him over under suspicion of not staying to the shoulder on a busy roadway. When it ended, Cohen had covered 3,168 miles through 12 states in 38 days. That trip began in La Jolla, winding through Arizona and New Mexico before stopping in Dallas for a survivor event. His unique, smile-inducing goal: Cohen planned to ride to New York to offer the cardiologist who said he would die a cleansing middle-finger salute. He began at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego, where he was treated. Six years later, Cohen made his first cross-country bike ride. “I was extremely (expletive) motivated to get out of there.” “That was something I needed to hear,” he said. Two weeks later, Cohen was back on his bike. The cardiologist who delivered a death sentence miscalculated - badly. “He said, ‘You’re not leaving the hospital.’ Those were his exact words.” “I asked the cardiologist, ‘When can I leave?’ ” said Cohen, rewinding the jarring nature of the response that was coming. He walked into an emergency room, but was soon rushed to the ICU where they discovered numerous blood clots, congestive heart failure and pneumonia. The health battles, Cohen learned, were just beginning.Īs he recovered from cancer, putting on muscle in recovery, he developed a dry cough. He was released the day before his 19 th birthday, but underwent chemo for 2 1/2 years. The diagnosis of leukemia led to 3 1/2 weeks in the hospital. “I found out it was my spleen pushing through my rib cage. I thought I was having a heart attack or something. That night, I woke up screaming in horrible pain.

“I coughed up some phlegm and it was covered in blood. “I remember there was some snow on the ground,” he said. 18, 2004, Cohen walked the half block from his home to job at the Super Deli, where he made sandwiches, poured coffee, rang up newspapers and talked Yankees baseball. On the first day of the second semester, the 18-year-old noticed lumps around his throat. Hiding in the kitchen offered a chance to create without pulse-spiking pressure. The kid who struggled with stuttering and the paralyzing fear it brought to social situations targeted culinary classes.Ĭohen did not figure to be a “front of the house” guy, in restaurant speak.

‘You’re not leaving the hospital’Īs a teen on Long Island, Cohen hopped aboard the subway for the 55-minute commute to the Art Institute of New York, nestled near Manhattan’s bustling Chinatown. “I’m nervous, but it’s really like they’re strangers because I’m not here without him.”Ĭohen’s coming to Jacksonville.

“I can’t wait to meet them,” said Cohen, 34.

Mazzuchelli’s desire to be an organ donor offered second chances for strangers - a liver to one, a kidney to another, a pancreas and kidney to another, corneas to an eye bank.Īnd a freshly-inked lease on life for Cohen, a man inspired to tackle a six-week, cross-country odyssey of head and - quite literally - heart. Three days later, all that kindness and thirst for adventure was gone. James had been involved in an accident with a helicopter rotor blade. So the call Cheers and Mazzuchelli’s mother, Christine, received Feb. His stepfather David Cheers characterized him as someone would “give the janitor of a public park the same respect he’d give the CEO of a corporation.” The affable officer whose motto “Go big, or go home” steered him to surfing and scuba diving lessons had a heart yawned wide for too many to count. James “Doc” Mazzuchelli was a Navy flight surgeon assigned to Marine Light Helicopter Squadron 267 at Camp Pendleton.

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