“The Sopranos” star Steve Schirripa experienced a true Christmas miracle after he left gifts and jewelry worth thousands of dollars in a taxi — and then managed to track the cab down and get the pricey baubles returned.
“There are nice people in New York City,” Schirripa said of the Christmas Eve experience. The actor, who played mobster Bobby Baccalieri on the HBO show, had gone to drop off gifts to his friend, jeweler John Paradiso, and was given presents in return.
“John gave me a beautiful diamond necklace for my wife, two watches for my daughters and a gold C for my younger daughter Ciara,” Schirripa told Page Six exclusively. “It’s expensive — worth easily in the thousands.”
The next errand was a brief stop at TriBeCa Grill, to pick up shrimp, which he says is a family holiday tradition. “I had a shopping bag with shrimp and a bag with jewelry. I got upstairs and said to my wife, ‘You gotta see what John got for you guys,’ ” he tells us of the moment he realized he forgot the pricey packages.
“The shrimp survived, but the jewelry I left in the cab, so of course I panicked. I went downstairs hoping the cab would come around the corner. I paid cash, I didn’t get a receipt.
“That was about to ruin Christmas. I felt literally sick to my stomach.”
But then, Schirripa called Andrew Murstein, president of Medallion Financial Corp., who was vacationing in Florida. After being given the time and location he’d started the taxi ride, Murstein contacted Ron Sherman, the CEO, and Jed Appelbaum, vice president of operations of Creative Mobile Technologies, which provides touch-screen TVs for the cabs. They were able to track down Schirripa’s taxi and deliver the gifts to his home.
“Now, that’s something not even Tony Soprano or Santa Claus could deliver on,” Murstein said of the situation. They also got some help from a kind stranger. “A woman found the bag of jewelry on the floor, and gave it to the driver,” Schirripa, who lives in Battery Park City, says. “I gave the driver a $100 tip. It really is a Christmas miracle.”