SAVVY MAINLINE

At 10 p.m. on July 29, 2023, Patrick Hoey, cancer survivor, four-year diver for Conestoga’s swim team and rising junior at Penn State, lingers on a dock in upstate New York.

It’s the first night of vacation – he’d been invited to tag along on his buddy’s family trip to the Finger Lakes – and he wants one last dip in Keuka Lake before rejoining his friends in the lakefront rental.

“So I dive off the dock and as soon as I hit the water, I can’t feel anything; I can’t move,” Patrick, 20, recalls on a recent Saturday morning in his family’s Devon home. “I was sinking face down in the water.”

Cue the carolers and deck the halls. For the first time in its 127-year history, the Devon Horse Show will be lit up like a Christmas tree this year.

Yuletide at Devon, a winter festival inspired by the Christmas markets in Germany, is coming to town … and staying from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve.

Produced by a father-son team from Villanova backed by 20 local investors, Yuletide aims to become an upscale holiday happening that families return to year after year.

Shortly after dinner on Sunday, April 30, T/E Middle School fifth grader Reagan Monast suddenly stopped dancing to Taylor Swift and ran up to her bedroom. A check of her Apple watch confirmed the worst: her heart rate was sky high – 144 beats per minute.

Panicked, she asked her parents: “Am I going to have another seizure? Can I make it stop?”

Hillary White Jean wafted into Wayne on a cloud of luxury perfume, designer heels, extravagant cars and personal charm.

Sixteen months later, her splashy store, JWH Boutique, departed in the December darkness, leaving a string of angry landlords, fashion vendors and small business owners in her wake.

The winter sun is setting at 600 Lancaster Ave. but the lights are still on at Berwyn’s “Riding Boot and Shoe Service.”

Third-generation cobbler Joe Quici putters around, spit-shining a boot here, ringing up a customer there.

No longer a young man, he’d been working even longer hours since word got around that he’d be closing up shop at year’s end. “People are trying to get their stuff done,” Joe explains. “I’m the only one in the area. I never want to disappoint anyone.”

He’s animated this late December day – even more chatty than usual – as he talks about his family’s 102-year-old business, his dying craft and his decision to retire.

Well, we logged a lot of miles last year.

We sniffed out new spots, introduced you to some fascinating folks and brought you news (we hope) you actually cared about.

We also welcomed thousands of new readers.

On Thursday, October 27, Jan Marc Dorfman left his Wynnewood home at 1:45 a.m. – the usual time – and set off on foot for his business. There were bagels to bake and orders to fill.

Legally blind from Stargardt’s Disease, Dorfman, 70, walked carefully through the early-morning darkness though it was a route he knew well – he’d walked it for decades.

What he didn’t know: that starlit one-mile trek to Delancey St. Bagels, his 32-year café in Wynnewood Shopping Center, would be his last.