A supermarket mogul who left a Staten Island country-club party to take a 10-minute walk home in bone-chilling temperatures was found dead the next morning just steps from his ritzy mansion.
Mike Valenzo, 72, the co-owner of three Met Food supermarkets in Staten Island and Queens, was spotted face-up on the pavement early Saturday by a stranger passing his tree-lined estate in Dongan Hills, police said.
The flustered eyewitness told The Post she dialed 911 just as Valenzo's business partner Bill Fani was arriving at 7 a.m. to take his pal to the airport for a trip to Florida. Instead, Fani found his friend on the ground near Four Corners and East Loop roads, a wealthy, tight-knit enclave where mansions that sell for upwards of $2 million dot the hillside overlooking New York Harbor.
Valenzo appeared to have slipped on the icy walkway, likely throwing his keys as he fell, Fani told the Staten Island Advance. The mogul had spent the night among well-heeled Staten Islanders at the Richmond County Country Club, fellow attendee Terry Tarangelo told The Post.
The exclusive club, packed with 230 guests for a member's surprise 60th-birthday party, counts politicians, judges, Wall Street bigwigs and newspaper publishers among its members.
He and Tarangelo shared a brief dance together, during which he gushed about a trip to join his wife in Florida. Valenzo toasted the guest of honor and then trudged home on foot at around 10:30 p.m. — through 2-degree temperatures.
Pals said Valenzo was in good physical shape and did not appear to have had too much to drink.
"I cannot understand why," Tarangelo said of Valenzo's decision to walk even the tenth of a mile home in such frigid weather.
Valenzo and Fani met more than 30 years ago when they were neighbors in the working-class neighborhood of West Brighton.
Valenzo co-built the food chain and went on to become a well-known local philanthropist whose food donations have gone to the Marine Corps, the Staten Island Zoo and Hurricane Sandy victims.
He was quick to help neighbors during the storm.
"During Sandy, we lost power. Mike and [wife] Fran had a generator. They jimmy-rigged an extension cord so we would have power, too. And you know, that meant a lot. Because we were able to keep our phones charged and stay in touch with family," said neighbor Amy Vozeolas, 46.
The Medical Examiner's Office is looking into whether he died from a fall or some pre-existing medical condition.
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