Born in the Fourth Ward neighborhood of Manhattan, Ruggiero grew up in the Knickerbocker Village private housing development in Little Italy, Manhattan. Ruggiero joined the Bonanno family as a young man, serving as a street soldier under caporegime Michael Sabella. Ruggiero soon became successful in bookmaking, extortion and loansharking rackets. Ruggiero was a 6-foot-tall (1.8 m), lean-bodied man with a narrow face, intense eyes, slightly stooped shoulders and a cigarette-raspy voice (likely due to chain-smoking English Ovals cigarettes).