9/11 foundation pays off mortgages for fallen Long Island first responders

Court Cousins, a volunteer firefighter and paramedic with the Syosset Fire Department, was one of those human dynamos who make Long Island communities hum.

A Little League coach who served as co-president of the North Syosset Civic Association and PTA, Cousins rushed to lower Manhattan in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks to aid in the rescue and recovery efforts and died of a 9/11-related cancer in 2024.

On Friday — the 25th anniversary of the terror attacks — the   Tunnel to Towers Foundation announced that it has paid off the mortgage for the Syosset home Cousins shared with his wife, Karen Vacchio, and their son, Andrew Cousins.

"I had left my job to take care of Court, and it was just too much, to be honest, to take care of Court, my son, and work full time," Vacchio said in a phone interview with Newsday. "So when Tunnel to Towers came forward, that was a huge relief for me."

In total, Tunnel to Towers said Friday that it had paid off the mortgages of 25 fallen first responders from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, including a dozen who died from illnesses connected to their exposure to the toxic dust in lower Manhattan after Sept. 11.

Among them are four more Long Island-based first responders — all of whom also succumbed to 9/11-related illnesses: FDNY firefighter Anthony Mastrelli, of Farmingdale; FDNY firefighter Robert Olsen, of West Babylon; NYPD Det. Dennis Vitelli, of Commack; and Nassau Police Officer Robert Daniel Negri Jr., of South Setauket.

Cousins, Vacchio said, received intense satisfaction from being so entwined in the Syosset community.

"He thrived on being out in the community and really enjoyed helping people," Vacchio said.

Cousins' work with the Syosset Fire Department — where he was a member for 26 years — was especially rewarding, as he provided a lift to people as they struggled with the lowest moments of their lives, his widow remembered.

"He always felt like he could provide the most help to a family," Vacchio said. "He was a very calm person, and he’d walk in and he felt like, in that moment of time, he could help people when they are going through a crisis."

Cousins was attending law school in 2010 when he was diagnosed with cancer, shortly before Vacchio became pregnant with their son, now a sophomore at Syosset High School, where he's a member of the football team.

Cousins graduated from law school and worked as an attorney for a stint, but by 2019, his life revolved around visits to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan.

"We were throwing everything we could at it, but unfortunately the cancer was so aggressive," Vacchio said. "They couldn’t get him into remission."

On July 23, 2024, just a week before his death, the Town of Oyster Bay proclaimed "Court Cousins Day" and presented him with a key to the town.

"Watching him go through that at the back end of life, for my son and I and his close friends, was really hard to watch," Vacchio added.

Tunnel to Towers also paid off mortgages for the other Long Island families, including Mastrelli's. 

Inspired by his Uncle Tommy, Mastrelli, who attended Half Hollow Hills West High School, joined the FDNY in 1991 before retiring from Hazmat 1 in 2022, department records show.

Mastrelli, who also served as a volunteer for the East Farmingdale Fire Department for 25 years and as a youth athletics coach, responded to the Ground Zero recovery efforts. He was later diagnosed with 9/11-related cancer and died Nov. 13, 2024.

Vitelli served in the NYPD for 21 years, assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force before his retirement in 2006. 

He died on Jan. 25, 2025, at age 63, officials said, from a 9/11-related cancer connected to his work with the search and recovery efforts following the collapse of the World Trade Center.

Negri Jr. served with the Nassau Police Department for 28 years beginning in 1983 and was assigned to the Ground Zero search and recovery efforts, Tunnel to Towers said. He succumbed to a cancer related to those efforts on Sept. 28, 2011, at the age of 56.

Negri's son, Robert, is now an officer in the Nassau Police Department, the group said.

Olsen was 55 at the time of his death in 2024 from ALS, which the family argued was linked to the months he spent at Ground Zero, even though the World Trade Center Health Program has to date refused to certify Lou Gehrig's disease as a 9/11-related illness.

The Tunnel to Towers Foundation was created by the family of Stephen Siller, an FDNY firefighter who was assigned to Squad 1 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, on Sept. 11. Siller had just finished his tour and was heading home to Staten Island when he heard a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

When Siller found traffic blocked at the entrance to the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, he strapped his gear on his back and ran nearly 2 miles through it toward Ground Zero. His remains were never found.