Helen and Carl Tommaso channel the classic ’60s television show, Green Acres.
The Tommaso’s WORDS AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY MONICA KASS ROGERS STYLED BY THERESA DEMARIA. HAIR AND MAKEUP BY LEANNA ERNEST OF DISTINCT ARTISTS
Carl Tommaso is riding hard. Boots in the stirrups and right arm up high, he whirls a lasso overhead, ready to rope a steer. Interventional cardiologist by day and cowboy in the margins, Barrington Hills’ Tommaso has been riding horses and roping steers in the competitive sport of team roping for more than 25 years. “People ask me, how did you get into this?” says Tommaso. “And I say, listen, once you leave Cook County, this might as well be Nebraska—Illinois is a farm state, and team roping is fairly widespread here.”
A skilled cardiologist who at his busiest performed 800 or more heart operations a year, Tommaso says the sport of team roping has been a huge stress reliever throughout his career.
One of the first generation of cardiologists to specialize in interventional surgeries (angioplasties and stents), Tommaso has been practicing as part of the NorthShore University HealthSystem for more than 25 years. “I love the practice, but it is a very high stress occupation,” he says. “Team roping takes me to a completely different place, meeting people from all different walks of life.”
Although Carl and his wife Helen, an ICU nurse now working with the pulmonary practice at Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital, are planning to retire in 2021, Tommaso says he will keep riding and roping.
The sport itself is a rodeo mainstay. It grew out of cowboys’ work-a-day method for “stretching” steers when they needed treatment or care from a vet or owner. A two-person maneuver done on horseback, one cowboy (the header) lassos the head of the steer with one rope, followed by another cowboy (the heeler) who lassos the hind legs of the animal with a second rope. In competition, champion team ropers can complete the entire procedure in less than 4 seconds.
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