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Editor’s note: This is another in a series of profiles spotlighting this year’s participants in the local Dancing With the Starz fundraiser.

Santo Gentile is one of the Starz dancers this year — but he’s not quite sure why.

“I think my mom nominated me. She and Judy Perez kind of threw me into it. They just called me up one day and said, ‘You’re going to be dancing with the stars.’ ”

He’s pleased to be dancing to raise money for his charities of choice — San Marco Catholic Church and for the local Society of St. Vincent De Paul.

The dance lessons take up a lot of time right now, something else to squeeze into his busy life. Santo is a 27-year-old single man who loves water sports and spends a lot of time on and in the gulf when he’s not at work, managing Joey’s Pizza and Pasta House on North Collier Boulevard.

Santo’s family has been coming to Marco to play for about 12 years and moved here full time nine years ago.

Missing his friends back in Illinois, Santo moved back there after awhile and went to College of Du Paige. Then he returned to Marco and joined the family business. Is he adjusted to Marco now?

“You bet, I love it. A lot of my friends are here and others come down from Illinois and of course my family is here all the time. I see more people from Illinois here now than when I lived there. Second cousins and friends come all the time.”

Proximity to the water helps as well. I mentioned that Santo loves being near the water.

“I like going out on the Wave Runners and Jet Skis and the boat. That’s why I love it so much. There’s not a ton of things to do on the island, but there’s plenty to do outside Marco — fun places to visit such as Orlando, Miami and Tampa.”

Work does get in the way, so to speak. Santo is “up front” now, managing Joey’s full time. But he didn’t start out meeting and greeting the customers.

“I started in the kitchen, in the back making pizzas, trying to learn everything back there. In this business, you have to learn how to do everything.”

Now that he has the grasp, the feel, the flair for running a successful restaurant, what’s next for Santo?

“I don’t want to be just in this restaurant all day for the rest of my life, but I hope to build off our success here.

“Maybe someday we can expand the Joey’s concept, to a companion place with fast service, good, healthy food, like that. The target market now is business lunch, people who want a good lunch and are concerned about their health.

“If we could do something good and fast for our service industry, business people, anyone who only gets an hour or less lunch break, I’d like to focus on something like that.”

Short term, there’s that Dancing With the Starz thing, the charity gala that takes place Aug. 11 at the Marco Island Marriott Beach Resort.

“Dancing is a lot of work. It’s not easy in that it’s very technical. A lot of people think it’s a cakewalk.

“My partner is Maryasha Izmaylova (one of the professionals at Modern Step Dance Studios in Naples.) I think we’ll probably do the cha cha. But I’ve just gotten started and it’s not as easy as it looks.”

Santo is, however, an optimist about the dance.

“It’ll be fun after this learning time. I’ll know what I’m doing on the dance floor.”

The rest of us will know about his dancing magic on Aug. 11 at Dancing With the Starz.