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Swartz, of Swampscott, is a cook by trade. He opened Matteo’s, a Newton restaurant that featured Mediterranean Italian cuisine, in 1999 before he sold the place in 2005.
But despite his years as a cook, slicing his index finger while trying to cut off a leg of his Thanksgiving turkey in 2019 is the worst injury he says he’s had in a kitchen.
“I grabbed my butcher knife, and I decided to just hack at it,” he told the Daily Voice in an interview. “I missed, and I took almost my whole finger off. I couldn’t stop the bleeding.”
His wife rushed him to the ER at Salem Hospital, where he was so appreciative of the staff working on Thanksgiving.
“The nurses took me into a room, and the doctor came and asked me what happened,” Swartz remembered. “We kind of laughed about it because I cut my nerve which doesn't feel so good.”
After selling Matteo’s, Swartz started working with at-risk kids in Dorchester.
Along with his sister, Debbie Shalom, who runs the Swartz Shalom Charitable Foundation with him, Swartz continues to give back to Salem Hospital four years after the Thanksgiving mishap.
The foundation has donated to other hospitals and charities, including Brigham and Women's Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Mass Eye and Ear, Swartz said.
“A lot of people in my area in the North Shore have a lot of money that don't give,” Swartz said. “If you can give to wherever you should give."
That’s something his parents told him a long time ago.
“That’s actually the one thing I listened to,” Swartz laughed.
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