All of the employees at the Hares Corner Starbucks knew Matthew Angelo Spampinato.
Many of the customers did, too. They described him as bright. Kind. Shining. “A breath of fresh air.”
On the evening of Feb. 9, Spampinato hung up his green apron and began his usual walk home from work along the shoulder of Route 273. He had almost reached Quigley Boulevard when he was killed in a hit-and-run, Delaware State Police said.
In their report, state police identified Spampinato by his birth name, Isabella. The 21-year-old was transgender and was still in the process of legally transitioning when he died.
Spampinato grew up in Georgia, about an hour outside Atlanta. It was always his plan to move out of the South one day, his cousin Morgan Hanners said.
He didn’t have an exact date in mind, but when he visited his friend in Delaware last summer, Hanners said he fell in love with it. So he returned his plane ticket home and decided to stay.
“He was very headstrong,” Hanners said. “Once he set his mind on something, he went with it.”
Hanners said she was opposed to the plan at first. She and Spampinato had always been close – “me and him against the world,” as she described it.
Hanners remembered that her younger sister was so jealous of their friendship when they were children that she tried to prank them while they were sleeping at their grandma’s house. She put shaving cream on Spampinato’s hands, Hanners said, and then tickled his nose with a feather so that he smeared the cream on his face when he tried to scratch it.
He then had an allergic reaction, Hanners recalled with a laugh.
“My grandma got so mad,” she said.
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Spampinato’s mother, Mary Spampinato-Moses, said she couldn’t pinpoint any particular memory of her son when asked.
“They all stick out,” she said.
Hanners said she last saw her cousin two days before he left for Delaware. They’d spent the day together and she dropped him off at home. They hugged, and she told her cousin that she loved him.
“And that was it,” she said. “That was the last time I saw him.”
Spampinato began working at Starbucks in late 2021, his co-worker Samantha Strothmann said. He was one of the first new hires after the store opened in October, and Strothmann often helped with his training when their shifts overlapped.
“He was always so selfless,” Strothmann said. “He would always ask how everybody was doing even when he wasn’t having a good day himself.”
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The baristas at Hares Corner are “still grieving,” Strothmann said, and set up a memorial in the store in his honor. It included an apron covered in written messages from Spampinato’s co-workers and flyers advertising the GoFundMe raising money to bring Spampinato’s body back to Georgia for burial.
Friends, family, co-workers and even customers have donated to the fund. One Starbucks regular described Spampinato as having “a smile that could turn a day around.”
In Spampinato’s last Instagram post before his death, he shared a collection of photos from his time in Delaware.
“I’ve been enjoying experiencing fall and winter in a new state for the first time,” he wrote on Nov. 16.
He also shared regular updates on his transition. He began hormone replacement therapy on Jan. 31, 2021, sharing a photo of his testosterone prescription that he said he waited four years to get.
“I’m glad I didn’t give up,” he wrote.
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In another post, Spampinato said he first realized he was not cisgender when he was 13 years old. Not everyone in his life was supportive, he said, but he appreciated those who were.
“He fought very hard to be who he was,” an anonymous family member posted on the GoFundMe. “It was not an easy road for him to come out (as) transgender and be the amazing person he is.”
Two weeks after Spampinato’s death, investigators do not have any new leads on the driver that killed him, state police spokesman Sr. Cpl. Jason Hatchell said. Over half of the fatal hit-and-run cases investigated by Delaware State Police in the last two years remain unsolved, according to Hatchell.
However, Spampinato’s friends and family aren’t giving up hope.
No matter the result of the investigation, Hanners said it was most important that her cousin isn’t reduced to a nameless victim.
“I want people to think of him as a human being who had a family (and) who had people that loved him,” she said. “I would give anything just to be able to see him.”
Send story tips or ideas to Hannah Edelman at hedelman@delawareonline.com. For more reporting, follow them on Twitter at @h_edelman.
