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Leaving a wheelchair for Killer Boot Camp
When
I met her 16 years ago, she was disabled and got around in a wheelchair
or with heavy braces on her legs. Today, she is an aerobics instructor
and personal fitness trainer living in California. She
operates Castaldi's Killer Boot Camp, a military-style fitness program,
in the mountains surrounding Burbank. She is a stuntwoman at Universal
Studios, and last week she landed a dinner theater role as a crazy
psychic. At
Sunset Hills in the fall of 1980, only five children earned the
Presidential Physical Fitness Award. Four of them were fifth graders,
all boys. She
lives those words today, but it was not an easy journey. In early
1981, Tina was diagnosed as having Leg-Calve-Perthes disease, which
caused the deterioration of her left hip joint.
"I
was told there was less than 5-percent chance that I would ever
regain the strength in my left leg or be able to walk without the
aide of crutches. But I never gave up or allowed the disease to
control me." She
amazed her family, doctors and nurses with her determination to
overcome the disease. Today that inspiring story motivates her boot
camp recruits to report to Burbank's Wildwood Canyon Park at 5:30
a.m. each weekday for six weeks. They come for an hour of professional
physical training that includes running, crunches, pushups, squats,
lunges, rope-jumping, relay races, obstacle course and for this
they each pay Tina $500. She's
currently conducting her 10th boot camp. Tina started what she says
was California's first fitness boot camp in May after seeing a segment
on TV's Current Affair about a military sergeant who started one.
Tina
said the director promised her that she could leave rehearsal "early"
---about 11:30 p.m. Then she can get at least four hours sleep before
getting up at 4:30 a.m. for her boot camp. "She's a pretty gutsy kid, Sunset Hills physical education teacher, Jerry Fortes, said of Tina in 1981. Did he have it right! |
If
I ever decide to write a book in retirement, maybe I'll write the
life story of Tarpon Springs' Tina Castaldi. What a story it is
already, and she's only 27 years old!
She
tells her own story in her boot camp manual: "I went from being
a gymnast and dancer to a little girl with a crippling disability
who would spent the next four years or so undergoing surgical procedures
and enduring traction, body casts, crutches, leg braces and, worst
of all, a wheelchair.
Tina
also works as a stuntwoman at Universal Studios three or four times
a month. She plays the part of Ma Hooper, modeled after the wisecracking
Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies, in a 20-minute Wild West show.
She shoots pistols and rifles boys, falls off a building and "explodes"
when the cowboys shoot the stick of dynamite she is threatening
them with.