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The Warwick’s small screening room filled quickly on Saturday morning. People filed past the black leather recliners in their winter coats — puffer jackets, fleece vests, quilted parkas — and gathered along the dark curtained walls beneath the art deco sconces. Bagels and coffee from Grab The Bagel, the shop owned by event organizer Dave Aldrich, waited near the entrance.
Nikolay “Niko” Kuzmina stood off to the side in a red sweater and gray fleece vest, greeting each person as they came to him. He hugged everyone. Cheek kisses. Handshakes that turned into embraces. Joy radiated off him.
“The way you work this room,” Select Board member Jim Zisson told him, “you should run for Select Board.”
For 23 years, Niko worked the checkout line at Stop & Shop in Swampscott. And for more than 20 years, Aldrich made sure to get in that line.
It didn’t matter how long the wait was. “Every minute with him was special,” Aldrich said.
So when Niko’s mother died this winter and the family began preparing to move him to Florida, Aldrich did what felt obvious. He organized a sendoff: Saturday morning, 10 a.m. to noon, at the Warwick. His shop would supply the food. Come say goodbye.
He asked people to arrive in waves, staggered by last name, so the room wouldn’t get too crowded. Marblehead did not entirely comply.
Niko is 39 years old. He has lived in this town his whole life. His mother cared for him, and when she died, his sister Olga “Olia” Goldiner flew up from Delray Beach to figure out what comes next.
The answer had been in motion for years. Goldiner said her mother had already been on a housing list in Florida, already packing boxes. But they kept putting off the move.
“I was afraid how it’s gonna be for him there,” Goldiner said.
The problem was Marblehead itself. The support system was too deep. Everyone knew him. Everyone said hello. How do you take someone away from that?
David Pliner used to coach basketball at Marblehead High School. He remembers Niko in the parking lot on his Razor scooter, out there even when the snow piled up, always finding his way to the gym to watch practice.
“He never had a bad day,” Pliner said. “He’s sunshine. That’s the best way to describe him.”
Pliner once wore a winter jacket that said “Titanium” across the front. Niko noticed. For years after, he called him Coach Titanium.
“I hadn’t seen him for a few years,” Pliner said. “And then when we saw that he was leaving, we said we’ve got to go see him.”
The night their mother died, Michael Golinder — Goldiner’s husband and Niko’s brother-in-law — got a phone call at 6 p.m. He and his wife caught the last flight out and landed at midnight.
In the hours between, a neighbor named Myra stayed with Niko. Det. Sean Brady helped coordinate everything else.
“You could tell there’s real empathy there,” Golinder said. “It wasn’t just like, ‘OK, such and such, this happened, and see you later. Here’s your police report.’”
The family waited before telling Niko what had happened. They weren’t sure how he would take it. When they finally sat him down, he absorbed the news quietly.
“Mom went to heaven,” he said.
Then they told him he would be living with his sister in Florida. They told him not to worry.
“And he’s like, OK, OK,” Golinder said. “And then he calmed down.”
At the Warwick on Saturday, people kept arriving with things to give him.
Zisson read aloud from a proclamation signed by all five Select Board members — Dan Fox, M.C. Moses Grader, James R. Zisson, Erin M. Noonan and Alexa J. Singer. It praised Niko’s “infectious positivity, warm spirit and unmistakable presence” and wished him well “in his next adventure.”
“While we wish him well in the warmer weather,” Zisson read, “he will always remain a cherished part of the Marblehead community, and we hope he returns often to visit — perhaps when the temperatures rise.”
“I will,” Niko said.
Officer Cabot Dodge presented a custom police polo. Niko pulled it on over his red sweater and opened his fleece to show it off: “NIKOLAY” embroidered above the left chest, “HONORARY OFF.” just below, the Marblehead Police badge stitched beside it. He gave two thumbs up.
Then Aldrich stepped forward with one more gift: a Grab The Bagel vest.
“You are now the official honorary baker at Grab The Bagel,” he announced.
Marblehead resident Don Puluse and Jeanna Anderson met Niko a few years ago through bocce. The Anchor to Windward program brought participants to play, and Niko was among them.
“It was the best day,” Anderson said.
The following year, Puluse and Anderson heard the group had returned. They went back to say hello. Niko remembered them immediately.
“He never forgets your name,” Anderson said.
Puluse looked around the screening room — the steady stream of visitors, the winter coats piling up. “I’ve really never seen anything like this,” he said.
Cassandra Sprague didn’t know Niko well, but her brother was in his class at Marblehead High School — the Class of 2005. She remembered seeing him ride his bike through the neighborhood when she was younger. He always stopped to talk.
“Not many people do,” she said. “Most people go about their business.”
Stuart Mason, Harrison Schell and Bart Lowden — friends from that graduating class — showed up at the Warwick. They posed for a photo with their arms slung around each other, throwing up hand signs and grinning. Being guys, they teased him about his high school crushes.
Louise Moore, who runs the kitchen at the Masonic Lodge, had a specific worry when she heard about the move: the tricycle.
Last year, students on the Marblehead High School track and field team raised money to replace Niko’s custom three-wheeler after he hit a pothole and snapped the axle. It had become part of him — his daily rides around town, his freedom.
Would it make it to Florida?
“We were ready to ride it down there if we had to,” Moore said.
The bike is going. So is everything else.
Niko has been in Delray Beach for a few weeks now. He walks three hours a day. His sister’s two dogs — Chip, 7, and Cookie, 4 — stay by his side wherever he goes.
“He goes for a walk, they’re in front of him,” Goldiner said. “Especially the older one is waiting for him.”
She told him he could start a little dog-walking business. He said he doesn’t want to pick up poop.
The neighbors have welcomed him. Goldiner has already lined up programs for him, including one she referred to as “Shark” — she said families sometimes relocate to Florida specifically for such services.
The family buried their mother nearby, so they can visit. A GoFundMe raised more than $25,000 to help with the funeral and the move.
And when a reporter asked Niko directly how he was adjusting, he said he’s doing OK. But he still misses his Marblehead friends.
Asked if he’ll find work? He answered, “I think I’m going into retirement.”
The family had braced for the worst. They thought the move would devastate him — 39 years of routine, gone. They thought he would resist.
Instead, when Niko saw Florida for the first time — the palm trees, the beach — something shifted.
“He’s just so, you know, ‘This is so beautiful,’” Golinder said. “‘The palm trees and the beach.’ He’s very excited about being there. And that was a major relief for us, because we thought the opposite.”
Still, Goldiner knows what her brother lost. Their mother had been his whole world.
“She was his everything,” Goldiner said. “His friend, his caretaker, all through the years.”
At the Warwick, as people filed through to say goodbye, Goldiner thought about what her mother would make of it all — the proclamation, the police polo with his name stitched across the chest, the fleece vest, the room full of people in winter coats who came out on a Saturday morning just to see him one more time.
“He cares more about everybody else than himself,” she said. “It’s always, ‘Are you OK? Are you OK? Oh, Max, are you hurt? What do you need? Let me get this for you.’”
She paused.
“He’s always the person that’s ahead of you.”
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