Sharks, Weddings and Pro Athletes! Here Are Our Latest Hidden Talents!

Welcome to the latest edition of Frontline’s “Hidden Talents”—featuring profiles of your colleagues with special skills you may not have known about!

Do you have a hidden talent that you’d like to share in Frontline, or do you know someone else at VNS Health who does? We’d love to hear about it! Just send us a message by clicking here.

• Lori King, Ultramarathon Swimmer
• Chat Govindan, Music DJ
• John Bonanno, Pro-Athlete Sports Clinic Organizer

Dodging Sharks and Going the Distance: Ultramarathon Swimmer, Lori King

Lori King’s VNS Health colleagues know her as a dedicated Research Analyst at the Center for Home Care Policy & Research.

To the world of athletics, however—and well beyond—Lori is a trailblazing open-water ultramarathon swimmer. Here are just some of her awe-inspiring achievements:

• In 2016, she became the first woman to circumnavigate Bermuda—a grueling 36.5-mile swim that she completed in a little over 21 hours. “Only one person, Sean O’Connell, had done that swim before, and that was 40 years prior,” Lori says. “Sean was there to greet me on the beach when I was done, which was so nice.”
• In June 2022, she swam Hawaii’s notoriously brutal 26-mile Kaiwi channel, finishing in 14 hours, 38 minutes despite being covered with jelly-fish stings.
• And in August 2022, she became the first person ever to swim the 14 miles from Montauk to Block Island (dodging sharks and ocean currents along the way).

Dangerous currents and nasty sea creatures aren’t the only challenges Lori has overcome in her swimming career. “I swam all the way through school and competed in college, but I always had terrible performance anxiety and stressed out a lot,” she says. “After college, I didn’t want to look at water again.”

In fact, she didn’t dive into a pool for seven years. In the interim she got married and, in August 2001, moved with her husband from her native Philadelphia to New York City, where she began working at VNS Health. A few years later, she was walking past the Vanderbilt YMCA on East 47th Street and caught a whiff of chlorine. “That’s when I realized how much I missed swimming—so I joined and started doing laps. It felt great to be active again, and I loved being back in the water. I swam every morning from 6 to 7:30, before work.”

It was in the Vanderbilt Y pool that she met a group of swimmers who urged her to try open-water swimming. “I didn’t even know what that was, but then I learned it just means swimming in an ocean or lake, with no walls or clean lines,” Lori says. “I thought, ‘why not?’ So I joined them for swims on Long Island’s East End. This was the first unstructured swimming I had ever done, and I was immediately hooked.”

She continued to challenge herself, until an obstacle came along in 2010 that stopped her in her tracks. “I had two young children, and I was swimming, working, and completing my master’s at Columbia,” she recalls. “Suddenly I started experiencing a tingling in my hands and feet. I thought it was nothing—I’m used to pushing myself through discomfort—but my husband made me see a neurologist.” 

It was a good thing she did. The doctor insisted she be admitted immediately for testing, and his hunch proved correct: Lori was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), an autoimmune disease that tricks the immune system into attacking the nervous system. “Had I waited a few more days, I might well have been paralyzed,” she says.

Fortunately, her immunoglobin treatments worked—but the recuperation was hard. “I was exhausted and discouraged, and really had to force myself to get back in the pool,” says Lori. She kept at it, ultimately regaining all of her strength, and then some.  “After swimming a 10K, I wanted to see what longer felt like, so I swam around Key West, which is 20 kilometers,” she recalls. ”Then I wanted to see what cold and dark felt like, so I trained for two years and swam the Catalina Channel, which is 20 miles. Then I wanted to see what even longer felt like, so I did the 8 Bridges Hudson River swim of 120 miles. After the GB diagnosis, I never wanted to feel that kind of helplessness again. It really taught me to keep pushing for more.”

As an athlete and a mother with a demanding job, balancing it all is something Lori continues to master. “It’s a constant struggle, and I have nothing but gratitude for my family’s support and the sacrifices they make,” she says. “I also get a lot of strength from my colleagues at VNS Health and from the work that we do. I work with a lot of really smart and caring people at the Research Center, and that has given me confidence in my swimming as well. My work also keeps me humble—dealing with patients and caregivers is an important reminder that there is a lot more going on in the world than just yourself.”

Over 250 Weddings and Counting! Warming Up the Dance Floor with “DJ Chaotic,” Chat Govindan

Since joining VNS Health four years ago, Chat Govindan has been busy supporting operations across multiple departments and initiatives in his role as Process Improvement Project Manager for VNS Health Personal Care. A self-proclaimed “Jack of all trades,” Chat—a.k.a. “DJ Chaotic”—also uses his day-job skills after hours to run his own company, Cygnus Entertainment, a one-stop entertainment shop for weddings, private parties, corporate events, and even festivals.

On weekends, Chat can often be found in the DJ booth at whatever event he’s working, playing music, talking on the microphone as he encourages everyone to get up and dance, and even producing the special effects and lighting to create an extra special atmosphere. He also runs the business’s day-to-day operations and is responsible for bringing in new clients.

“The majority of my business comes for word-of-mouth referrals,” says Chat. “If you deliver quality, the business will follow.”

What started off as a hobby has become a full-fledged platform for a passion that has always been part of Chat’s DNA. “I come from a long line of Caribbean folks who are in the music industry,” he explains, “so my love of this business has been passed down from my family. Music is the medicine of the mind, and it’s my job to create a warm feeling for people so they feel comfortable and get out on the dance floor.”

Chat’s favorite events are weddings, by his count, he’s entertained at over 250 of them, DJ’ing events all over the tri-state area and even internationally in the Dominican Republic and Cancun, Mexico. “To me, it’s the presence of love, and everyone coming together to celebrate that love, that sets weddings apart from all the rest,” he says.

For Chat, who has been working as a DJ for more than 12 years, time management is a key component of his success. Following a full day working at VNS Health, he’ll spend his evening hours on planning and paperwork, while his weekends are usually fully booked with events. “The power has to come from within,” he notes. “Finding two or three hours every night after you’ve worked, cooked dinner and cleaned the house—it’s not easy, but it’s worth it!”

Mickey Rivers, Clyde Frazier, Doc Gooden… John Bonanno Teams Up with Pro Athletes to Help Kids

John Bonanno, Director of Procurement and Supply Chain Management, has loved sports for as long as he can remember. His earliest memories are of playing stoopball alongside his childhood buddies in Queens, New York. When John had a son of his own, he wanted him to be just as excited about being a part of a team as he was, so he made it a priority to support his son throughout his adolescent sports career. Eventually, this led John to start coaching his son and other neighborhood kids on the teams at St. Kevin Catholic Academy and St. Kevin Parish in Flushing, Queens.

When his son was in seventh grade, John was gifted two tickets to a Yankees game that included a chance to meet the team in the dugout prior to the game. As John waited for his son to finish the meet and greet, he struck up a conversation with a man standing nearby. That man turned out to be former Yankee outfielder and designated hitter Oscar Gamble—one of John’s favorite major league baseball players of all time.

“As we spoke, Oscar began telling me how he drove up from Alabama a couple of times a year to run a sports clinic for children in New York,” John recalls. The idea of a clinic resonated with John. He stayed in close touch with Gamble following their encounter at Yankee Stadium, and ultimately the major leaguer agreed to run a clinic for the kids John was coaching at St. Kevin.

That summer, he drove up to New York at no cost to John to help get the clinic off the ground. He also persuaded other former Yankee players to participate in the event, which he called “Baseball with the Pros.” The clinic did so well that John decided to add notable basketball and football players to the clinic roster, expanding it to include “Basketball with the Pros” and “Football with the Pros.”

Thanks to John’s connection with Gamble, the clinic has hosted such notable athletes as Bernard King, Walt “Clyde” Frazier, Mickey Rivers, Wesley Walker, John Starks, Doc Gooden, and Jesse Barfield. While Gamble passed away in 2018, the clinic he and John started has continued to thrive. Through his fund-raising activities, John has been able to pay for the transportation and hotel expenses of all participating athletes while keeping the clinic free for children.

“The clinic is great because it allows children to meet professional players and come away with pictures, autographs, and a lesson—all at no cost to their families,” John explains. “It also gives me a real opportunity to give back to the community.”

John intends to continue offering the clinic to children for free going forward, and he hopes to bring in still more athletes in future years. His goal, he adds, is to keep youngsters excited about what the world of sports can offer in terms of their personal development. “I want these kids to know that whatever you put into an activity, you are going to get out of it,” he says. “Put enough time, effort, and dedication into anything, and the possibilities are endless.”

Note: The next “Basketball with the Pros” clinic will take place on January 6, 2024, and will feature former New York Knicks star Larry Johnson. For more information, contact John Bonanno at [email protected].

To read more Hidden Talents on Frontline, click here.