As everyone around the world is still trying to cope & make sense out of the Newton, CT tragedy, Victor Cruz is doing his part in trying to give back.
If you watched the game yesterday, you may have noticed that Cruz used his cleats and gloves to pay tribute to Jack Pinto who was one of those murdered on Friday. Cruz was the favorite player of the young 6-year old Giants fan and will be buried in Cruz’s jersey.
Victor Cruz is planning on helping the family going forward.
According to Jay Busbee at Shutdown Corner:
Like the rest of the country, Cruz watched and read with horror as the events of Sandy Hook unfolded on Friday. And by Saturday, he realized that he had a personal connection.
“My Twitter feed started filling up with ‘Jack Pinto, Jack Pinto,'” he said. “I’m reading this, and I’m in my hotel room fighting back tears.” He asked his girlfriend Elaina to try to track down Jack’s family, and within 20 minutes, she’d located them and patched him in on a three-way call.
This first time, Cruz and Jack’s family didn’t talk for very long, just a few minutes of shared sadness. But Cruz pledged to honor Jack’s memory in Sunday’s game, and more importantly, pledged that he’d be there for the family for a long time to come.
He’ll head to Newtown later this week to present Jack’s family with the cleats and the gloves. He was sketchy about the exact date, perhaps because he didn’t know, perhaps because he’d rather not turn a visit with the Pinto family into a media opportunity. “The last thing I want to do is add stress on the family in this tough time,” he said.
Going forward, he wants to do all that he can for the family. “We may do a fundraiser, something like that,” he told Yahoo! Sports. “For now all we want to do is comfort the family. We’ll think about other things we can do to help in the long term.”
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