Rich Volpe was a buff 34-year-old NYPD detective when he was diagnosed with a rare 9/11-related kidney disease that threatened to rob his fertility and leave him clinging to life.
The illness — IgA Nephropathy, a debilitating disease his doctors believe was triggered by months inhaling toxic dust at Ground Zero and the Fresh Kills landfill after the Sept.11 terror attacks — forced Volpe to exit the force in 2004, his career and dream of starting a family crushed.
In 2013, on the day doctors told Volpe his kidneys were failing, he gave then-fiancee’ Angela, who also wanted kids, his blessing to break up.
Courtesy of Rich Volpe
“So I gave her the out, I said, ‘Angela, you’re young. You don’t need to live a life like this,’” he told The Post. “She looked me right in the eye, and she said, ‘I love you, and I’m marrying you, no matter what.’”
That love – and a generous stranger – helped the couple survive their darkest days.
An article in The Post about the hero cop’s rare disease prompted a big-hearted reader to anonymously donate a kidney, saving Volpe from dialysis, a grueling regimen that usually shortens lives.
That gift has kept him alive to this day.
Following the transplant, the newlyweds had to wait a year before trying to conceive while the post-op medication – which might cause infertility or birth defects – wore off.
But it worked. Gianna, now 10, was born in 2014.
“I think it was a miracle baby,” Volpe said. Baby sister Sofia arrived three years later.
“My girls adore him,” Angela said of their doting dad. “He’s there for everything, all their sports and
school stuff. We do everything together as a family.”
Volpe, now 58, takes loads of medication for his kidney, asthma and sinus problems contracted after 9/11. Transplanted live-donor kidneys typically last up to 20 years or so, and Volpe worries he may need another one soon.
“I want to be around, hopefully, to see my kids get married,” he said. “That would be awesome.”
Volpe’s plight is compounded by the World Trade Center Health Program’s failure to investigate whether IgA Nephropathy – aka “Berger’s Disease” – should be added as a 9/11 condition covered under the Zadroga Health and Compensation Act, which would entitle him to federal aid.
Researchers have found 24 cases of the rare kidney disease reported by 9/11 first responders.
“We think we have seen five to 10 times more of this illness than we would expect to see in the general population,” said Ben Chevat, executive director of 9/11 Health Watch, an advocacy group trying to focus attention on the problem.
Dr. Alan Coffino, Volpe’s former kidney specialist, believes toxins in the respiratory system can trigger the ailment: “I’m highly suspicious that his Ground Zero exposure is the cause,” Coffino said when Volpe’s kidneys failed.
Two other Ground Zero ex-cops, Robert Joseph Martin and John Muldoon, also contracted the disease — which usually hits people in their 60s or 70s — in their early 30s, and went into kidney failure around the same time in 2013 and 2014.
“That’s not a coincidence – 12 years after 9/11, three police officers get kidney transplants six to seven months apart,” Martin, 54, told The Post.
The Mount Sinai School of Medicine started looking into the odd kidney cluster in 2018, with the three retired cops participating, but has not yet published a study. A Mount Sinai spokeswoman would not explain the delay.
“We can’t get an answer. It’s so frustrating,” said Martin, a father of two who got a transplant in 2014 but needed a second in 2019. That’s when his wife gave a matching kidney to a 64-year-old woman, whose daughter donated one to Martin in an organ swap.
Muldoon, an NYPD sergeant, had three kids before 9/11, and a fourth in 2004. In 2014, his brother Robert donated a kidney when Muldoon desperately needed a transplant.
“I’m expecting my first grandchild in a couple weeks. I’m blessed,” he told The Post. “People have gone through a lot more than what we’re going through right now.”
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