This Café Serves Up Fixes to Broken Toys, Lamps, Jewelry, Coffee and Cake Too

By Michael Gold

The Santa Express toy train hadn’t worked right in almost a year. The wheels didn’t turn. The lights didn’t go on. The train whistle didn’t whistle. The toy didn’t make the sounds a train is supposed to make when it rides over the tracks.

Oliver Morelock, the five-year-old owner of the Santa Express, escorted by his father, Mark, came to a Repair Café at the Mahopac Middle School a week ago last Saturday, seeking help for his radio-controlled set.

Paul Kopilak, a Repair Café volunteer, fixed everything. Kopilak got the wheels to turn, the lights to go on and the train to whistle and make its train track sounds.

“The man’s a miracle worker,” Oliver’s dad told me. “We’re very happy.”

Sustainable Putnam conducts a Repair Café every three months at the school. Joe Montuori, Sustainable Putnam’s executive director, started the organization’s repair café in late 2023. He got the idea from the Yorktown Repair Café, held in the Grace Lutheran Church in Yorktown Heights.

Repair Café has volunteers who can help fix lamps, toasters, televisions, DVD players, food processors, coffeemakers, toys, electronic games, vacuum cleaners, bicycles, clocks, jewelry, woodwork, computers and other digital devices, plus ceramic plates, cups and statues and even clothing.

“We usually get 40 items repaired in one day,” Montuori told me.

If the Repair Café coaches don’t get the product fixed on the spot, they will sometimes bring the item home to fix it, then deliver the repaired unit back to the owner.

Kopilak, the train-set wizard, a retired facilities manager from Yorktown, said, “I have one rule – do good.”

Bob DeAngelis, a retired chemical engineer for IBM, fixed an attendee’s beloved music box that had belonged to her mother. The woman said, “It hasn’t worked in years.”

“I love fixing stuff,” DeAngelis said. “I just show up with my tools. I like helping people. In my retirement, it’s time to give back.”

At the jewelry station, Jean Spadaccia, from Yorktown, a professional jeweler, fixed three silver necklace chains and a bracelet in less than one hour. The chains needed re-attachment. Another piece needed soldering. That one she would bring home and fix later.

“I’ve always been interested in antique, vintage jewelry,’ Spadaccia said. “There’s nothing worse than broken jewelry. The pieces may have been broken for years. People get their pieces back and sometimes they cry, they’re so happy.”

Montuori encourages people who need their products fixed to sign up in advance.

“We’d like people to pre-register, so we know what tools we need,” he said.

But, of course, they will try to help anyone who simply walks in the door and needs something fixed.

Montuori worked as a repair coach at Yorktown’s Repair Café for two years, which inspired him to develop one under Sustainable Putnam’s sponsorship.

“I started repairing vacuum cleaners, lamps and bikes,” Montuori said. “Sarah Wilson (the founder and organizer of the Yorktown Repair Café), said start your own Repair Café.”

I asked Montuori what’s the rationale for repairing people’s damaged items.

“A lot of people are interested in saving money,” he said. “Some don’t want to see it (their product) landfilled. A lot of our clientele is older, and they were raised not to throw out things.”

Also, “Every town has an e-waste day, where we throw out TVs, radios, computers, vacuum cleaners, phones, “Montuori continued. “A lot of it goes overseas. We’re trying to keep waste out of the waste stream. Not only is a lot of the waste toxic, but it could also be repaired and kept out of the waste stream. All of that waste has a carbon footprint.

“It’s more economical to repair things than buy. There’s a cost to waste that we pay through the environmental damage it does.”

If the Repair Café volunteers can’t fix an item, “we refer people to repair shops that are still around,” Montuori said. A vacuum cleaner and sewing machine shop operates in Baldwin Place, and there’s a furniture restoration shop in Carmel, he pointed out.

I also found two furniture repair places in Mount Kisco, one focused on antique pieces.

The Repair Café concept began in Amsterdam in 2009, Montuori explained. A Hudson Valley resident, John Wackman, started one in New Paltz in 2013.

“He popularized the Repair Café,” Montuori explained. “There are more than three dozen in Hudson Valley towns,” now, he said.

The international Repair Café website can provide tips on how to fix your product and direct you to a repair café in your area.

Suzanne Walsh, Montuori’s wife, made dynamite raspberry and blueberry cake for attendees. Free coffee is provided, too.

The next Sustainable Putnam Repair Café will be held Saturday, Dec. 14 at Mahopac Middle School, from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.  For more information, visit https://sustainableputnam.org/repair-cafe.

Michael Gold has had articles published in the New York Daily News, the Albany Times Union, and other newspapers, and The Hardy Society Journal, a British literary publication.