‘A force to be reckoned with:’ Staten Island musician, 22, killed in SIE crash, remembered

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.— St. Lucia, the Catholic patron saint of the blind, sits on the lawn of a Midland Beach home, watching over the family of 22-year-old Jianna-Lucia Pischetola in the days following her tragic death in a crash Sunday on the Staten Island Expressway.

As the youngest child of the Pischetola family, “JiJi,” came at the perfect time to complete her family —10 years after her closest sibling, Diandra Pischetola, the family said.

“We called her our ‘dessert baby,’” said her elder sister. “She was the cherry on top, because we had our chocolate, vanilla, strawberry.”

“We saved the best for last,” said Mom, Jacqueline Pischetola. “Jianna was a dynamo, a force to be reckoned with.”

For the Pischetola family, JiJi was a gift from St. Lucia herself. That’s why Pischetola’s father, Peter, decided to name her “Lucia,” after the saint, because they shared the same piercing blue eyes.

“All my kids have brown eyes, my wife has blue eyes, I have brown eyes,” said Peter Pischetola. As a child, he’d suffered a terrible accident involving his eyes, and it was his mother’s prayers to St. Lucy that gave him his eyesight back, he said. Ever since then, the name “Lucia,” carried a powerful meaning of light, hope, and resilience for the father of four.

Although JiJi Pischetola was the baby in the family, she was the leader who ran the house, much to her family’s delight.

“She was the leader, we listened to her,” said her mother, between tears. “She was the strong one who believed in God so much.”

JiJi Pischetola spoke prayer and blessing over the lives of her loved ones, tenderly reminding them that they could do…