Candi Troia
Server
Brother Sebastian’s
Candi Troia thought she didn’t want to be a server all her life. She started working at Brother Sebastian’s in 1988, and in 1992, she decided to go into real estate.
“I got my real estate license but continued to work at Brother Sebastian’s,” she said. “The servers, managers, and the owner were now family to me and I couldn’t leave.” Troia was 32 when she started. She’s now 64.
In 2010, she was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. “As a person that never smoked a cigarette this was quite a blow to me.”
At the time, she was living in Kansas City, where two different oncology doctors informed her she only had one year to live.
“As you can see, I didn’t listen to those doctors,” she said. “I went to Houston to MD Anderson, where they saved my life.”
In 2013, Troia moved back to Omaha to be with her family. She returned to real estate and to Brother Sebastian’s.
“I have met so many wonderful people there who I now consider friends,” Troia said. “I have a number of regular customers who request me. They will call or text me to see if I am working and if it’s not my night to work, I will pick up the shift just so I can see them.”
In June 2019 her cancer metastasized. “I had a tumor removed from my brain,” she said.
Troia is still on the chemo pill Tarceva, and said she will be for the rest of her life.
“I honestly don’t know what was worse to deal with. All the treatments I have been through for the last 10 years or dealing with the coronavirus.”
This article was printed in the June 2020 edition of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.