Golfer, antique car fancier, retired firefighter Phil Leanio dies at 70

Golf was but one joy of life pursued with gusto by Philip Leanio, a retired San Francisco Fire Department battalion chief who called Santa Rosa home since 1987.

“He just loved golf,” said his wife, Theresa Leanio. “Whatever he did, he excelled. If he couldn’t do it 100% he didn’t want to do it.”

Exploring on a motorcycle, ushering at San Francisco Giants games, helping out people less fortunate, pampering his 1940 Ford and spending quality time with his family also were cherished by Leanio, who collapsed at Petaluma’s Rooster Run Golf Club on Friday.

He was aided at once by assistant golf pro Johnny Nice and Leanio’s three golf buddies, all of them fellow SFFD retirees, then by first responders with the Petaluma Fire Department. Leanio’s heartbeat and respiration were restored. But he did not recover from complications of cardiac arrest, and he died on Sunday.

He was 70.

Leanio (pronounced lee ANN yo) and his wife had lived for just a year in the Larkfield home they rebuilt from the ground up after the 2017 Tubbs fire destroyed their original house, the site of their wedding on Valentine’s Day of 1997.

“We just celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary,” said Theresa Leanio, who goes most often by Terry and who was 11 when she met her future husband. They both married other people and started families, then rediscovered each other after he was widowed and she divorced.

Philip F. Leanio was born in San Francisco to immigrants from the Philippines on Oct. 3, 1950. He grew up in the Excelsior District and attended Balboa High School.

He became a firefighter with the San Francisco Fire Department in 1974. Over the course of a 31-year career, he worked out of several stations and ascended the ranks to battalion chief.

His wife said that on his days off, he worked painting houses and helping people prepare their tax returns.

Leanio rode a Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle and for years was a leader of the charitable Wind & Fire riding club, whose membership consists of current and retired firefighters.

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks that killed many firefighters, Leanio was one of several Wind & Fire members who rode their Harleys to New York City to demonstrate support for survivors and respect for those who perished.

Leanio was active also for years in the SF Firefighters Toy Program, which collects holiday gifts for kids who otherwise would likely go without.

He and the former Teresa DeLosa blended their lives and families in the Larkfield home in which they were married in 1997. The couple was at home the night of Oct. 8, 2017, when cataclysm blew in with a ferocious wind.

Before escaping the Tubbs fire they were able only to rouse a few sleeping neighbors. They returned the next day to see their home and neighborhood had been rendered to ash.

Phil Leanio told a KTVU reporter, “I never cried so much ... actually broke down, went to my knees.”

Having a new home built on the spot scraped clean after the Tubbs fire took the Leanios two years.

Along with virtually everything but the clothes on his back, Phil Leanio lost to the firestorm his Harley-Davidson. Rather then replace it, he bought a beautifully restored, orange 1940 Ford.

He entered it in car shows and all through the COVID-19 crisis enjoyed driving it by the homes of people he loved to salute them on their birthdays.

A San Francisco Giants fan, he decided following his retirement from the SFFD in 2005 that it would be fun to work for a season as an usher at what was formerly AT&T Park and is now Oracle Park. He wound up working at the ballpark for 10 seasons.

A tennis player when he was younger, Leanio in recent decades was hugely into golf. Last Friday morning, he and three retired SFFD friends were just beginning a round at Rooster Run in east Petaluma when he collapsed at the first tee.

Starter monitor Larry O’Shea at once phoned the clubhouse. Longtime assistant pro Johnny Nice grabbed and came running with a lifesaving device called an automated external defibrillator, or AED.

Nice had done the same thing in 2017, when a golfer suffered cardiac arrest and collapsed on the 14th fairway. That man’s heartbeat returned after Nice administered several shocks from the AED.

Last Friday, Nice arrived at the first tee and saw that the stricken man was Phil Leanio, whom he knew well. Nice handed the AED to Leanio’s retired firefighter friends, who’d begun chest compressions. Then Nice hurried off to direct arriving Petaluma firefighter-paramedics.

The rescuers succeeded in restoring Leanio’s respiration. He was rushed by ambulance to Memorial Hospital in Santa Rosa.

Terry Leanio said she knows everybody had done everything they could for her husband when he died at the hospital on Sunday. She spoke later to Rooster Run’s Nice to thank him for his efforts to save the man she loved, a man who’d done so much for others.

“He was very kind man. A very caring man,” she said of her husband the former firefighter. “Everyone who met him felt very at home.”

Phil Leanio is survived by his wife in Santa Rosa and by their children, Elissa Gaitan of San Leandro, Rita Harris of Alameda, Jessica Lennio of Scottsdale, Arizona; Melissa Chapman of Washington, D.C., and Justin Dombek of Las Vegas. Also surviving Leanio are his sisters, Margie Martin of Seattle and Vivian Power of San Jose, three grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

Leanio’s family intends to host a celebration of his life this summer.

You can contact Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.