Former New York Mets Chef Graduates Rutgers at 57 to Start Second Career in Nursing
Theresa Corderi cooked for the likes of David Wright, Mike Piazza, and Pete Alonso during her three decades with the Mets
After working 30 years as the executive chef for the New York Mets, Theresa Corderi envisioned a retirement filled with beach days and carefree nights. Five years later, Corderi is about to get her college degree and start a second career as a nurse.
“I was so happy. I was retiring at 52. It was a dream,” said Corderi, who is receiving her bachelor of science from Rutgers School of Nursing in May. “I have a place in Florida and went down there. I lasted a year. It was terrible. When you’re used to using your mind and working hard, it was like going from 100 miles per hour to zero. I was having an identity crisis. I was like, ‘What am I going to do? I can’t just play golf and watch TV for the rest of my life.’”
From March 1992 until October 2021, Corderi worked as the chef for the players, coaches, medical staff, trainers and the front office of the Mets. During those three decades, she met the likes of David Wright, Mike Piazza, Jose Reyes, Bartolo Colon, Jacob DeGrom, and Pete Alonso.
The job may seem glamorous – Corderi attended Piazza’s wedding and still texts on occasion with a few of the players – but it was also grueling, with long hours preparing daily meals and keeping track of the dietary needs of 75 people.
“The team is usually 25 people or so; then you’d have all the guys that are on the injured list, they’d be there too,” Corderi said. “Then you’d have the training staff, the coaching staff, the front office staff, the clubhouse staff. You’d have to feed all of them, three times a day.”
She’d also travel with the team to away games where she’d cater the meals. Her job began well before opening day, as she also accompanied the team to Florida during spring training. She wasn’t just cooking; she was also managing a $1.4 million budget, ensuring safety and sanitary regulations were met, and keeping inventory.
“It was baseball; it was fun,” Corderi said. “The players were wonderful to me. The clubhouse guys, the trainers, the coaches were all wonderful. It was like working with your family. It was like a second family.”
Corderi, 57, grew up in a home that rooted for the other New York baseball team, the Yankees. “I wasn’t even a baseball fan,” she quipped.
While Corderi was working as a bartender, she met Fred Wilpon, the former owner of the Mets. They became friendly and Wilpon eventually offered her a job. She worked at the then-Diamond Club, a high-end restaurant at the former Shea Stadium, in Flushing, Queens.
“I became friends with the guys who worked in the clubhouse, and I used to cook at home and bring the food in,” she said. “It just evolved. The clubhouse manager kept asking me to bring more food in and then they finally just built a kitchen for me in the clubhouse.”
Corderi sees a connection between the career she left and the one she’s entering.
“People have asked me, ‘How do you go from being a chef to nursing?’” she said. “Cooking for people is the same thing as caring for them; it’s just a different form. I think it’s service. Even though I was the chef, I became a little bit of a therapist to the players, always talking to them and helping them through problems.”
Corderi returned to New Jersey in 2022 when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. In the process of taking her mother, Beatriz, who is better now, to doctor appointments, the idea came to Corderi to get a part-time job in the medical field to fill her days.
Corderi, of Morristown, N.J., enrolled in a technical school in Union County to get her certification as a medical assistant. One of her professors there saw in her the potential to do more.
“He said, ‘You’ll like being a medical assistant for the first year, and then you’ll be bored. You need to become a nurse,’” Corderi recalled. “He pushed and pushed. He made me apply to Rutgers. And I said, ‘Listen, if Rutgers accepts this old lady as a nursing student, then it was meant to be.’”
Not only did she get in, but Corderi is leaving Rutgers with two degrees, graduating with honors, and a School of Nursing’s Star Student Award. She ended up double-majoring and will also receive her degree in psychology from the School of Arts and Sciences.
During her time at Rutgers, Corderi indeed became a star student.
“As an older student, Theresa brought a calm, easy confidence into the classroom that her younger classmates embraced,” said Interim Associate Dean and Associate Professor Barbara Sinacori, who was one of Corderi’s professors. “While other students saw assignments as tasks to get through, Theresa saw meaning behind them, and that perspective added value to the class."
Corderi already has that part-time job she was looking for. She’s working as a medical assistant at Atlantic Health in Morristown in geriatrics and primary care. After doing her clinical rotations as part of her degree’s completion, she’s decided to pursue a position as an inpatient oncology nurse after graduation.
“I think it’s the place where I can make the most difference,” she said. “Patients facing cancer have a different mindset. They need a little bit more help, a little bit more therapeutic care, a little bit more conversation, and a little more handholding. That’s where I’ve excelled.”
Corderi said she saw how some of the medical staff treated her mother, almost dismissing her. She wants to ensure the cancer patients she will see are treated with compassion.
She was going to skip the graduation ceremony, but she said her parents – who are 88 and 80 – insisted she attend.
“There aren’t too many places that would take a chance on somebody my age with my life experience that decides to want to become a nurse,” Corderi said. “But Rutgers – and I’m going to start getting all teary – was amazing in what they allowed me to do and gave me this opportunity.”
