Employee Feature: David Accardi 

When David Accardi was just a few months old, he played the Baby Jesus in a Christmas pageant staged by the orphanage in Peru caring for him and his infant sister.

The Kraken senior manager of events and community and his slightly older sibling, Katie, had been given to the orphanage in his native city of Lima by their young, unmarried biological mother. They were later adopted by American parents, Lois and Robert, who lived at the orphanage with the infants for several months until both could travel, then brought them to the U.S. and a home in New Jersey when Accardi was 9 months old.

“It was an orphanage and a school and there were kids running around all the time,” Accardi said. “Christmas is real big there and so they put on a show and my parents told me I played the Baby Jesus. And I apparently cried through the whole ceremony.”

Years later, Accardi and his family returned to the orphanage and ran into the same Priest running it – who instantly remembered the family given how many months his adoptive parents had spent there.

“He was astonished to see us,” Accardi said. “And to see how big we’d gotten and everything.”

Growing up in New Jersey, Accardi hadn’t always given much thought to his roots. But his sister had pushed Accardi to do the same.

“She was a lot more dedicated to finding out more about our history and everything,” he said. “And I thank her for that because it made me kind of who I am today.”

Accardi loves Peruvian cuisine. His parents would make it for the siblings on Peru Independence Day every July 28 and make other efforts to keep up a semblance of their native culture. Returning to visit the orphanage, meeting the Priest, and seeing where they’d slept and the Christmas pageant he’d heard so much about had been performed was “a pretty full circle moment and it meant a lot to both of us.”

It also reminded him how fortunate he was to have been gifted a new life abroad.

These days, Accardi, who graduated from St. John’s University in New York with a bachelor’s degree in sport and fitness administration/management, supports any local Peruvian groups or events he can. He made his way to Seattle in May 2021, joining the Kraken just ahead of that summer’s expansion draft.

Accardi’s work for the team often sees him helping expose BIPOC youth to skating and hockey for the first time so “they can look at hockey as something familiar to them.” He also feels Hispanic Heritage Night, pres. by Modelo, taking place Saturday as part of the Kraken Common Thread commitment to inclusivity and unity within the team’s community, can show others like himself that their personal backgrounds do matter. And be a chance to share those backgrounds with others.

“I think the Hispanic and Latinx community as a whole gets overlooked a lot,” he said. “And just by highlighting some of the rich cultures and history that each community has. It definitely makes an impact.”

An impact on a much bigger stage than that initial Christmas pageant appearance in his far-off birthplace.