MARTINO SHARES HIS STORY

When you talk with Martino, you better pay close attention. He talks fast and has a lot to say, and listening closely is worth every second because this 82-year-old San Franciscan has done a lot of things and has been a lot of places.

Before he even gets to the part about running an import-export business in the wine trade out of an office in Bulgaria, Martino might drop in an arresting fact like the time he was “doing some non-military civilian work” in Southeast Asia and got hit in the back by an exploding hand grenade. He was in that war-torn corner of the world doing contract work as a civilian from the mid-1960s to the late-’70s. Before that he had served in the Army in Europe in the 1950s.

After spending a good 15 years in Asia, Martino decided it was time to put that part of his life behind him. His father had died and he wanted to come home and take care of his mother. These days, he can look back over a long and eventful life from the perspective of his hometown City by the Bay and watch the changing cityscape of one of America’s great gateways to the world. He’s not altogether happy with the growth and changes in his hometown, but he’s seen chaos before and survived to live another day.

Martino may have put his work and experiences in Asia behind him, but the wear and tear on his body lingered on, especially the damage done to his back by that hand grenade explosion. He’s had to endure long surgeries to his back, the most recent in 2019 when he had arrived in the eighth decade of his eventful life and was suddenly aware that his once strong, sharp memory just wasn’t working like it always had.

“My memory stopped working,” he says, citing as just one example how words he once knew no longer came back to him. “I’ve sung all my life,” he says, “but I couldn’t remember the the songs as well as I used to.”

He began using Prevagen and is now taking three of the 40 mg Prevagen Professional capsules a day. “It’s really worked,” he says. “I was cranking! I have to say being able to sing again is a pretty good thing.”

For a fellow who’s had a lifetime of getting out there on the world stage, being able to sing is a pretty good thing for this man of the world to enjoy doing, especially in a city that’s long been a doorway to the whole wide world that once was his home away from home.