NEW ROCHELLE, NY (July 11, 2026) — On June 29, 2017, a mother arrived at Anna & Jack’s Treehouse, 136-138 Centre Ave. — the New Rochelle location owned by Rob and Christina Rubicco, which remains open at that address today — to pick up her daughter and was told the child could not be found. The day care had not called 911. It was the mother who went out onto the street and flagged down a passing patrol officer, setting off a five-unit police canvass that ended with an officer pulling the 2½-year-old, by her feet, out of a hollow plastic limb inside a play tree house, where state regulators would later determine she had been trapped for 35 to 40 minutes.
Records obtained by Talk of the Sound — a New Rochelle Police Department event report and an extensive New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) enforcement file — show the incident did not end with a warning. OCFS suspended the day care’s license, moved to revoke it outright, and ultimately extracted a signed stipulation requiring the company to strip the entire tree house structure from the property, pay a $6,500 fine, retrain staff, and prove compliance before it was allowed to reopen.
Anna & Jack’s Treehouse was founded in 2013 as a home-based, basement child care operation at 3 Kensington Oval, Rob and Christina Rubicco’s home, before the company established its New Rochelle center at 136-138 Centre Ave. and later expanded to Pelham, Larchmont and, more recently, Hawaii.
What the mother did that the day care did not
According to the NRPD event report, Officers Scott Wallach and Anthony Scarnati were on patrol when they were flagged down around 6 p.m. at the corner of Prospect Street and Centre Avenue by a woman who said she had dropped her daughter off at the day care that morning and, on returning for pickup, was told the child was missing. Police broadcast a description — 2½ years old, blonde hair, purple Nike shirt, pink Nike shorts — and five patrol units responded to assist with a canvass, arriving within minutes of dispatch.
In addition to Scarnati and Wallach, officers Emmanuel Gonzalez and Christopher Carelli, Sgt. Robert LaBarbera, and Lt. Daniel Conca are listed as responding personnel; Lt. Robert Wenzler was the desk officer who logged the event. Two detectives, Det. Messina and Det. Navarrete, assisted in the search.
Officer Wallach’s narrative states a Treehouse employee told police the child had last been seen in the playground area roughly 20 minutes earlier. About 15 minutes later, she was found in the same playground area — lodged inside a plastic tree house structure, unable to move. Officers removed her; she did not appear to need medical attention and was reunited with her mother.
OCFS’s own enforcement letter, dated July 14, 2017, states the total time more precisely: the child “was left alone and unattended outside on your day care center playground, wedged inside of a hollow plastic tree limb in a tree house structure, for 35 to 40 minutes.” The same letter states that staff “failed to notice that [she] had become obscured from view in the tree limb while the class was outside on the playground,” and — separately — “also failed to notice that [she was] missing when the class returned to the classroom.”
According to OCFS, it was not until the mother arrived at day’s end that “teachers finally realized [she] was missing and a search ensued.”
The letter states plainly: “Your day care center failed to call 911 at the time, rather it was [the] mother that went to get police assistance. A police officer located [her] in the tree limb and pulled [her] out by [her] feet to dislodge [her]. You also failed to call the Office to notify OCFS of this serious incident.”
An NRPD officer contacted weeks later
A separate entry in the NRPD report, dated July 12, 2017, shows Officer Wallach was contacted by “the management company of incident location,” which asked that the incident be “re-investigated due to lack of clarity,” saying detectives on scene had told them the child “was simply hiding in the tree house.”
The police record does not support that claim. Wallach’s original narrative — written the day of the incident — described the child as “lodged inside a plastic tree house and unable to move,” and nothing in the report shows that characterization was ever revised. When Wallach followed up, one detective’s account did not clearly confirm the “hiding” framing one way or the other; a second detective, Det. Navarrete, told Wallach he had personally entered the playground calling the child’s name and gotten no response from that area. Wallach’s entry concludes the discrepancy “was not clarified because once we found [her] the detectives resumed their normal duties without debriefing me.” Talk of the Sound could not determine who at Anna & Jack’s Treehouse, if anyone, was behind the request; the report does not say.
Whether the child had initially climbed into the tree house voluntarily or become trapped immediately is not resolved by the records and is not, on its own, inconsistent with either account — a child can hide and then become genuinely unable to free herself. But “simply hiding” is not the finding either police or state regulators ultimately reached: both records describe a child physically wedged and immobile, missing long enough to trigger a five-unit search, at a facility owned by Rob and Christina Rubicco that never called 911.
OCFS found five separate violations
OCFS’s enforcement records show the June 29 incident was not the only problem regulators found. Following inspections on June 30 and July 11, 2017, OCFS cited Anna & Jack’s Treehouse for:
– 418-1.8(a) — competent supervision: “the supervising staff lost sight of the child” when she entered the plastic play tree house. Rated Serious.
– 418-1.11(c)(2)(iii) — emergency care: the day care “did not call 911 after they realized that child was missing.” Rated Serious.
– 418-1.5(n)(4) — age-appropriate equipment: the “play treehouse where child was found was inappropriate” for the child in question. Rated Serious.
– 413.4(d)(4) — staff clearance: a staff member “was not listed as an approved staff person on the DCC roster.” Rated Serious. This regulation concerns the requirement that operators submit completed fingerprint-clearance images to OCFS before an employee has contact with children; the record does not specify whether this staff member had an outstanding background clearance or simply an administrative roster omission.
– 418-1.8(k)(2)(ii) — group size: inspectors found nine children in the infant room against a licensed maximum of eight, for a required 1:4 ratio. This violation was identified during the same inspection window but is not otherwise tied to the June 29 incident.
A sixth, earlier violation — signs of mice and glue traps found under furniture and in closets, cited under 418-1.11(i)(9) following a June 2 complaint inspection — was folded into the same enforcement action.
Suspension and proposed revocation
On July 14, 2017, OCFS notified Christina Rubicco that the day care’s license was “hereby suspended and revoked,” citing Section 390(10) of the Social Services Law and stating the suspension was based on a determination that “the health, safety, and welfare of children in your care are in imminent danger.” (A related stipulation document refers to the underlying suspension letter as dated July 11, 2017 — a three-day discrepancy in the documents that Talk of the Sound could not resolve.) The day care was immediately removed from OCFS’s provider referral list. OCFS’s letter warned that continued operation without a license could draw a $600-per-day fine and a referral to the state Attorney General’s office for injunctive relief.
Outreach by Rubicco’s to Gov. Andrew Cuomo
The timeline of the following days is documented across both files: on July 11 and 12, Rob and Christina Rubicco emailed then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office seeking help with the revocation (detailed below); on July 12, Officer Wallach’s report shows he was contacted by “the management company of incident location” asking police to revisit how the incident was characterized. Talk of the Sound is not asserting a connection between these events beyond their proximity in time; the police record does not identify who made that request.
Rob and Christina Rubicco requested a hearing to contest both the suspension and the revocation. Rather than proceed to a hearing, the parties signed a Stipulation of Settlement on July 13, 2017.
The stipulation: removal, retraining, and a fine
Under the signed stipulation, obtained by Talk of the Sound, the Rubiccos and Anna & Jack’s Treehouse, LLC agreed to:
1. Remove the play tree house from the property entirely, addressing the 418-1.5(n)(4) violation.
2. Hire a professional exterminator within 30 days to address the mice infestation.
3. Provide all staff with regular child contact a total of 10 hours of OCFS-preapproved training within 60 days — three hours on child abuse, three on regulations, and four on supervision — on top of any training already required by law.
4. Develop and implement, within 30 days, a new procedure for tracking which children are present when the group moves indoors and outdoors, beyond a simple headcount.
5. Develop and implement, within 30 days, a new OCFS-preapproved procedure for verifying which parent retrieves which child at pickup.
6. Submit a plan, before the suspension was lifted, for keeping children safe going forward, subject to OCFS’s assessment.
7. Pay a $6,500 fine, due July 21, 2017.
The stipulation conditioned lifting the suspension on proof of the fine payment, the signed agreement itself, and — explicitly — “proof of removal of the treehouse.” Separately, full withdrawal of the revocation proceeding was conditioned on proof of compliance with the training and procedural requirements.
OCFS not interested in Rubicco push for remedial measures
Email correspondence in the OCFS file shows Rob Rubicco pushed back on the removal requirement. On July 13, 2017, Frances L. Friedberg, Esq., Senior Attorney in OCFS’s Day Care Enforcement Bureau, wrote to Rubicco: “I spoke with the regional office, and they were adamant that the tree house be removed. They are not interested in any remedial measures to the tree.”
The same day, Rubicco forwarded OCFS a statement from the equipment’s manufacturer, Little Tikes Commercial (PlayPower, Inc.), regarding the “Tot Tree” product: the structure was rated for ages 6 months to 5 years, though the company recommended it not be used simultaneously by both a 6-month-to-2-year age group and a 2-to-5-year age group. Rubicco wrote that “at the time of incident, only [the older] years olds + were using” the equipment — an apparent attempt to show the equipment had been used age-appropriately, contrary to OCFS’s citation. Little Tikes Commercial’s own product listing describes the Tot Tree as designed for climbing and hiding, with a “peek-a-boo side window” and a slide exit built into the tree house structure — features marketed to encourage the kind of imaginative play a manufacturer would expect to include children going inside and out of view. The removal requirement was not altered by OCFS regardless.
Rubicco also asked OCFS whether the day care could pay half the $6,500 fine immediately to reopen, with the balance due within 30 days, citing an inability to cover the full amount before payroll. “Tomorrow is payroll and we just don’t have enough to cover the full cost right now,” he wrote.
Separately, on July 11 and 12, 2017, Rob and Christina Rubicco emailed then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office directly, writing that the revocation “been done very unfairly” and that “62 families are out of childcare,” and asking to speak with someone on the governor’s staff. Records show the correspondence was logged and forwarded internally as a scheduling-related inquiry; Talk of the Sound found no indication in this file that it altered OCFS’s enforcement position.
Removal, and removal of the removal
On July 13, Rubicco advised OCFS he had dismantled the tree house and sent photographs as proof. OCFS responded the next day: “You are clear to open on Monday. Please remove the ‘dismantled’ treehouse parts from the property before then.” Rubicco replied that the structure weighed more than 400 pounds, that he had arranged for two workers with a pickup truck to haul it away, and that when he learned the pieces were still on site, he “went there myself and removed it.” He wrote: “We were in no way trying to ‘get over’ on anyone… I truly hope this does not stop us from opening on Monday as this was a simple mis fire.”
Follow-through
By early August 2017, correspondence in the file shows Rob and Christina Rubicco reporting completion of the required procedures: a new sign-in system tracking headcounts and bathroom breaks, a four-digit parent code system to check children in and out, and an expanded emergency-procedures section in the staff handbook warning that failure to follow protocol could result in “suspension and or termination” of staff. An OCFS compliance-history document dated August 8, 2017 still listed the underlying violations as “Not Corrected” as of that date; Talk of the Sound has not obtained a record showing the specific date OCFS formally closed out the stipulation or restored the program to its referral list.
What the record does not show
The names of the child, her mother, and Treehouse staff members are redacted or were not included in the portions of these records obtained by Talk of the Sound. Talk of the Sound has not obtained records showing whether this incident was reported to the Statewide Central Register of Child Abuse and Maltreatment, which is confidential under state law and not independently searchable; whether such a report was made remains an open question Talk of the Sound has not been able to answer from the documents in hand.
Talk of the Sound has three extensive FOIL requests pending with OCFS, filed in January 2026, seeking the complete regulatory history of all three current Anna & Jack’s Treehouse locations — New Rochelle (License ID 753272), Pelham (License ID 872577), and Larchmont (License ID 909417) — including licensing applications, all inspection and complaint records, corrective action plans, fines, enforcement actions, hearing records, and correspondence between OCFS and the Rubiccos. OCFS has said it expects to complete these requests by August 7, 2026. Those records may address whether a report was made to the Central Register in connection with this incident, and may also cover an earlier period of operation, prior to the 136-138 Centre Ave. location’s current license, that is not fully captured by the pending requests.
Editor’s note: On July 9, 2026, four plenary summonses were served on this publication’s publisher by Sheehan & Partners LLP on behalf of LLCs associated with Robert P. Rubicco, in connection with this series. Talk of the Sound continues to report on matters of public record and will provide updates on that litigation as appropriate.
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This article was prepared with the assistance of AI tools under the direction and editing of Robert Cox.
Have information about this story? Email robertcox@talkofthesound.com (preferred) or contact via WhatsApp: +353 089 972 0669.