Gia was the brightest light in our universe. Born in New York, she was a lifelong athlete, she was the Captain of the Swim Team and had the most beautiful broad shoulders and long legs around. She graduated from Georgetown University and started her career as a nurse at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York. She earned her Masters Degree from Columbia University. She moved to California where she became undoubtedly the most popular Nurse Practitioner at California Cancer Care in Marin.
At her brother’s MBA graduation party, she met the love of her life, Damon and together they traveled the world, living in Hong Kong and Thailand. Their children, Lucy and Harlan, were born explorers visiting many countries in Southeast Asia at a tender young age.
In 2013, Gia was diagnosed with Stage I breast cancer and received treatment in the US, where after treatment with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, she was deemed cancer-free. The family returned to the US and relocated to California in 2014. Gia returned to her career path as a Nurse Practitioner, her passion for nursing stronger than ever, fueled by her personal experiences. She devoted herself to working to educate and support cancer patients and their caregivers.
In November 2016, after walking 39 miles in a breast cancer charity walk a month earlier, she had a sense something was wrong. After numerous evaluations, she was found to have a recurrence in her abdominal cavity. Her physicians were baffled by this rare site of recurrence. On her 40th birthday, she started her regimen of chemotherapy that would be the beginning of numerous, aggressive treatments to combat this disease. Throughout her treatments, she persevered to live her best life as a wife, mother, friend, daughter, sister, cousin, traveler and explorer first, not as only a cancer patient. After a grueling, two and a half year battle, she died as she lived, with the ultimate grace, humor, kindness, integrity, and strength, passing peacefully at home surrounded by love with her family and friends.
The bravest, kindest, selfless, generous, goofy, loving, funny, beautiful soul, Gia touched the hearts, lives, and worlds of everyone who were lucky enough to know her. She shared the joy of good food, good company, being in the great outdoors and exploring everything her life and the world had to offer. Family and friends around the world many times over will cherish their precious memories and all the joys she brought to their hearts and hope to continue her legacy of kindness and love.
