Who was / is Joey Cole? What is his connection with Philadelphia?

I don't know of any Joey Cole who had any connection with Philly.

Possibly you are thinking of Joey Coyle, who was the guy who was lucky enough to be right behind an armored truck when a couple of bags of cash worth about $1,000,000 dropped off and landed at his feet, unnoticed by the driver. This was in about 1980 or so.

Sadly, his luck was not matched by his brains. The news of the lost money was all over the city and Joey went on a spending spree, spending the cash like a drunken sailor, leading to his being identified and jailed. In the end, he did not even have enough money to pay for his own lawyers and had to use a public defender. He committed suicide some years later.