Obituary: Former Huntington Beach Mayor ‘Jersey Joe’ Carchio dies at 89
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Joe Carchio was a lover of people and a lover of baseball, and those two passions converged when Ocean View Little League won the World Series while he was Huntington Beach’s mayor in 2011.
Carchio, who’d coached baseball and football at Ocean View High, was more than happy to put a parade together to celebrate the youngsters’ accomplishment.
“I always say that, because we rotate mayor, it always seems like we have the right mayor for the right year,” said Jill Hardy, a two-time mayor herself who served with Carchio on the City Council for six years.
“Joe the baseball coach was mayor when the [Ocean View] Little League team won the World Series, and that was just so perfect. It was so important for him, and, of course, such an honor for all of us to have the Little League World Series team here.”
Better known by some as “Jersey Joe,” Carchio died of natural causes July 9 at the age of 89 in New Jersey, according to Dave Garofalo, his longtime friend and fellow former Surf City mayor.
Carchio was first elected to the Huntington Beach City Council in 2006, and reelected in 2010. A bid for a third term in 2016 was unsuccessful.
A New Jersey native and United States Army veteran, he settled into Huntington Beach in the 1970s. He owned a screen printing business as well as a pair of restaurants, Bella Luna and Jersey Joe’s Deli/Restaurant, before getting into local politics.
Jersey Joe’s, located on Olive Street in downtown Huntington Beach, opened in 2002. It was a successful business, Garofalo said.
“It was truly a sports bar, not so much in watching sports on television but talking sports, person to person,” he said.
And, if one was lucky, he or she might be able to strike up a conversation about baseball with the owner himself.
“He was a robust guy,” Garofalo said. “He was out there — ‘timid’ would not be one of the words you’d use to describe him. He was generally liked. Everybody’s got some detractors someplace, but he did a good job as mayor.
“His way of getting things done was to grab the ball and run with it, versus meticulously planning every step.”
Another highlight of Carchio’s tenure as mayor was presenting the key to the city to surfing legend Kelly Slater, Garofalo said.
Mike Posey, another former Huntington Beach council member and mayor, said Carchio helped him launch his own political career, putting him on the Fourth of July Parade executive board and eventually the Planning Commission.
“When I did run for city council, Joe was always a source of knowledge and inspiration,” Posey said. “He was really sincere. I remember talking to him before the election, and I said, ‘Joe, how do you learn all this stuff? There’s so much to learn.’ And Joe says, ‘Try to pick a couple of things and become expert at them. That will serve you well.’ So I did; I learned about housing policy and CalPERS pensions and some other things.”
Another longtime friend and Huntington Beach local, Moe Kanoudi, called Carchio the people’s choice.
“He was open to talk to anybody about anything,” Kanoudi said. “He would not get defensive; he would not try to argue. He would listen, and if he had any answers, he would give them to you. If not, he would get back to you.
“As soon as he met somebody, after that, he called them a friend. Everybody was his friend. Whenever he talked about somebody, he would say, ‘Oh, my friend so and so,’ and he had only met them once. That was his personality — very friendly, very open, never defensive.”
Carchio moved back to New Jersey in 2022 after his girlfriend, Judith Rosser, sold her house in Huntington Beach, Posey said. Both of them wanted to be closer to family.
Carchio is survived by Rosser, sister Eileen Petrosino, three sons and a daughter as well as their spouses, three stepchildren, 13 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.
A visitation and funeral are scheduled for Thursday and Friday, respectively, at O’Brien Funeral Home in Brick, N.J.
