Man dies of injuries suffered in carjacking
Victim had been on his way to meet long-lost love

By Matthew Walberg and James Janega | Chicago Tribune reporters
11:02 PM CDT, September 12, 2008

Jacint Calderazzo was 30 minutes away from reconnecting with an old flame.

Just down the street from Midway Airport, where the woman was to arrive, the 88-year-old widower guided his Buick into a drugstore parking lot and sent his daughter in for a pack of gum before meeting the woman he almost married 60 years earlier.

When the 54-year-old daughter returned minutes later, about noon Sunday, Calderazzo of Valparaiso, Ind., lay bleeding and unconscious in the parking lot, his Buick Lucerne missing and a torturous weeklong vigil for his family just beginning. It ended in grief early Friday in an Oak Lawn hospital room.

"She'll always have that picture ingrained in her mind," Jane Calderazzo said of her sister Carmine, who found her father badly injured on the Southwest Side last weekend after a carjacking. Since then, Calderazzo's large family and many friends have been in shock, she said.

"I never thought anybody would just take my dad away from us and his grandkids and his friends," Jane Calderazzo said.

Shortly after 1 a.m. Friday, Calderazzo was pronounced dead in Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, a medical examiner's office spokesman said. An autopsy showed he had been run over with his own car.

Prosecutors on Friday added first-degree murder charges against Kenneth Starr, who had been charged with aggravated vehicular hijacking and attempted murder. Records show Starr, 33, of the 4800 block of West Congress Parkway has a criminal background that includes felony convictions for narcotics, home invasion and aggravated battery.

The story of how Calderazzo and his oldest daughter came to be at a Walgreens parking lot on their way to pick up Lillian Beattie is one that spans six decades, three states and a long marriage.

Though 88, the widower had a boyish giggle, still loved spicy Italian fare and had devoted friends. When the Calderazzos took family vacations, his daughters said, someone often would happily shout, "Cal! Hey, Cal!" to their father in far-off places like Toronto, New York or Colorado.

"Cal" Calderazzo grew up in Vandergrift, Pa., and served as an aerial photographer in World War II. He came back to Pennsylvania after the war and worked as a state trooper. He and Beattie nearly married but broke off the engagement, his family said.

Instead, Calderazzo married a girl named Joan from nearby Canonsburg. They had three daughters, Carmine, Barbara and Jane, and moved to Valparaiso, near where Calderazzo worked security at what became National Steel Co. in Burns Harbor.

Calderazzo also was a protective father.

One boy drove to the house to pick up his middle daughter and honked his car horn outside. Calderazzo appeared instead of Barbara, approached the car and told the teen "absolutely not." The boy drove away, possibly forever, his youngest daughter said. Calderazzo was that kind of family man.

When his wife died in 1991 it broke his heart, Jane Calderazzo said.

A few years ago, she said, her father got back in touch with Beattie.

"They were just a nice little matchup," Jane Calderazzo said.

As Carmine Douglas went inside for a pack of chewing gum Sunday, police records stated, Jacint Calderazzo got out of his car to move things out of the back seat. A man pushed him aside and jumped into the car.

In Cook County Bond Court on Friday, Assistant State's Atty. Susanne Groebner said Calderazzo stumbled and began to walk behind the car just as the carjacker sped backward, hitting Calderazzo and leaving him on the ground "bloodied and immobile."

Starr, who has a tattoo of praying hands on his abdomen and a peace sign on his chest, told others about the robbery and how he ran into Calderazzo and hit three other cars as he made his escape, prosecutors said. Streamwood police arrested Starr—who was carrying Calderazzo's credit cards—Tuesday.

Starr maintains he stole the Buick and heard a shout while backing up but didn't know Calderazzo was behind the vehicle. He was ordered held without bail Friday afternoon.

Calderazzo also is survived by a sister, Gloria, and eight grandchildren, Jane Calderazzo said.

"I love my dad very much, and I miss him with all my heart," she said in a vanishing voice on the telephone after the hearing. "It was always such a beautiful life."

In Valparaiso, Calderazzo's family—who for days had crowded his hospital room and perched on the corner of his bed—gathered in Barbara Klumpe's home in the center of town. Several cars were parked outside. Caterers delivered food.

Neighbors said the family was overwhelmed.

Tribune reporters Jeremy Gorner and Emma Graves Fitzsimmons contributed to this report. Fitzsimmons reported from Valparaiso, Ind.