Community service

Christopher Perez, a four-year letter carrier, had just finished one section of his route in Yorktown Heights, NY, on March 28 when he saw a white plume of smoke coming from an area he had just delivered to. At first, the Westchester Merged Branch 693 letter carrier thought that maybe someone was putting leaves in a fire pit, but when the smoke turned black, he realized that burning leaves is not allowed in this development.

He got in his truck and drove back to the area, where he saw several neighbors gathered. This was a 55-plus senior community, so they had canes and walkers and were unable to do much when it came to the fire.

Perez first ran around the four-unit building, knocking on everyone’s doors to make sure that they knew about the fire and were getting out. No one came out of one of the units, but he knew, or thought he knew, that the customer who owned the unit normally went to Florida in the winter. But the neighbors informed him that they had seen a man in the unit. Perez walked to the back of the building and saw the man come out onto the second-floor balcony in the back of the house.

“I’m telling the gentleman, ‘Hey, I don’t know if you know, but the house is on fire. You need to get out of the house,’ ” Perez recounted. “He looked at me and goes, ‘Oh, I gotta get my keys and my phone.’ And I’m like, ‘OK, you better hurry up. You better hurry up. Come on, get out of the house.’ ”

Within minutes, the house was starting to go up in flames. “So, now I’m getting pretty antsy,” Perez said. “I’m like, ‘Dude, you really gotta get out of there, sir.’ He kept saying that he can’t find his keys. He kept continuing to go in and out of the house. I’m thinking, ‘You know what? I’m going to go to the front door, kick in the door and bring him out, and that’ll be the end of the story.’ ”

Little did Perez know that he wouldn’t be able to get within 20 feet of the front door because it was covered in flames. “At the time, I had a big beard that went down to, like, the middle of my chest,” he said, “and when I ran to the front where the fire was at, it literally curled my beard on my face. Now that plan is completely out, because there’s no way I’m running through a door that’s completely engulfed in flames.”

The carrier kept his cool and figured out his next steps.

“The flames at this time were at least 20 feet high,” Perez recalled. “I’m like, ‘My God, this guy’s not going to be able to get out, and the only way he’s going to be able to get out is if he jumps.’ ”

He continued: “So, I run to the back, and I’m like, ‘Sir, listen, there’s no way you can get out this front door. Can you please jump? If you jump, I’ll catch you somehow. We’re both going to get hurt, but I can guarantee you that’s probably going to be the best-case scenario, because you will die if you stay in this house.’ He was like, ‘No, I’m not jumping.’ ”

The man was in his 50s, and Perez remembered him saying that he couldn’t “afford” to jump due to the possible effects it could have on his body. Despite the man’s refusal to comply, Perez knew he had to do something.

“It was like a fight-or-flight situation, and I chose to fight,” Perez said.

He decided to move his truck underneath the balcony. He climbed up on the hood, then on the roof, then climbed over the banister. He made his way into the house and found the man in the kitchen, still looking for his keys and phone.

“I was like, ‘Forget about your keys and your phone. That’s replaceable, but you are not,’ ” Perez said. “Then, I dragged him and pulled him out the door. He did not want to put his leg over the banister. I don’t blame him when you’re at a certain age—you’re not trying to go over no banister—but at that point, I’m like, ‘Dude, it’s do or die now. We’ve got to go.’ ”

To urge him to jump, Perez said, “ ‘I have a family, and I’ve got to make it home to them, and there’s no way that I can go home to my family and say that I left you behind. So, we both have to go,’ and he just looked me in my eye and said, ‘Fine.’ ”

Finally agreeing to leave the building, the man let Perez help him over the banister and onto the truck.

Although the building was severely damaged, none of the residents sustained any serious injuries. After being demolished, the building is now in the process of being rebuilt.

Perez often helps out elderly customers in need on his route. On one occasion he performed CPR, bringing back his customer. Even as Perez was being interviewed by The Postal Record about the fire story, a customer with dementia suddenly collapsed in the street.

“I put him on my back, and I piggybacked him up the little flight of stairs in the front of his house then brought him into his wife,” Perez said.

The carrier has received some media attention for his actions, but he’s brushed off any praise. “I feel like it’s something that anyone would do, you know?” he told News 12 New York.

On April 23, Kyle Quillen, a one-year letter carrier, was on his route in Cherry Hill, NJ, turning from one street to the next when he smelled smoke.

When the Camden Merged Branch 540 member turned his head back, he said he saw “a plume of smoke coming from the house.” Quillen called 911 and ran back to the house, which he had delivered to earlier, and saw that it was now engulfed in flames. He knocked on the door, then turned to knock on the neighbors’ doors—but as he turned the corner, he saw a woman, a baby and a dog all on the side porch. The woman was “petrified” by the fire when he found her, the carrier added.  

“I ask her just to hand off the baby to me, but she’s worried about the dog getting loose, so I grab the dog [with a makeshift leash made out of his Arrow Key chain], I bring him out and I give him off to a neighbor,” Quillen said. “Now she [the woman] is in the back yard trying to go out through the back gate, but the fire’s moving pretty quick. So, as I made contact with her, I grabbed the baby and tucked him into my shoulder, and we ran past the fire, and I got them both out of the back yard, past the fire of the house.”

About two minutes after Quillen helped everyone out, the fire department arrived. Firefighters were able to put out the two-alarm fire, but the house has been razed and has been vacant since. The woman and child were checked out for smoke inhalation at a nearby hospital.

After talking to the fire officials, Quillen went on with the rest of his route.

“I was just completely happy that the only thing that was lost was the house, and nobody’s life was lost,” Quillen said. “Nobody lost their pet. It was a good feeling.”

Sydney Billingsley, a Dayton, OH Branch 182 member, was delivering her route on June 28 when she heard a man screaming for help along with dogs barking. Initially, the four-year letter carrier was unsure whether she was hearing correctly, but quickly realized she was, so she approached the house. She asked the man whether there were any dangerous dogs, and he said there were not.

When she entered the house, she found him lying in a pool of blood, having been shot eight times.  

“I used to be a firefighter, so I’m no stranger to danger,” Billingsley said. “It was just an instinct. I just saw a man call for help, and I have some medical experience.”

She called 911 and used towels she found in the house to apply pressure to his wounds.

“I was lying across this man’s body,” Billingsley said. “I had my right arm over the top few wounds … and then I had my left hand pressing on his left thigh.”

The ambulance came in about five to 10 minutes, while the carrier stayed on the phone with the 911 operator and asked the man questions.

“I knew exactly what to do: put pressure, keep him conscious and talk to 911 thoroughly,” Billingsley said.

The man survived the shooting, but after being released from the hospital, he was taken to rehab due to the loss of feeling in his legs. 

“The person who heard the male calling for help and ultimately called 911 likely saved the victim’s life by getting him the medical attention he needed in a timely manner,” Dayton Police Sgt. Andrew Zecchini told the Dayton Daily News.

The Dayton police investigation led them to a suspect who, as of July 11, was facing two counts of felonious assault and one count of aggravated robbery. 

Heavy smoke coming from a customer’s trailer windows and loud smoke alarms alerted Jairo Lopez of a possible fire as he was working his Midwest City, OK, route on March 13. The Oklahoma City Branch 458 member had worked on his current route for about two years and knew that an elderly woman who was deaf lived there and that she wouldn’t have been able to hear the alarms.

The eight-year letter carrier knocked on the door and tried to open it along with the windows, but it was to no avail. So, he searched for help.

“I drove around to the other street where I had seen some maintenance workers,” Lopez said. “I notified a maintenance worker, and he drove with me back to the lady’s house.”

The maintenance worker had a spare key to the woman’s home, so they went into the trailer together. They found the woman toward the back of the trailer. She was unaware of the fire, because she didn’t hear the alarms or see a sign of the fire and when Lopez reached her she was “unconscious or asleep.” Lopez said, “We took her out,” explaining that they lifted her “shoulder to shoulder” and carried her outside.

The fire was minor and resulted from a faulty wire in the oven. It was contained in time, leaving only smoke damage. The woman was fine afterward and hadn’t sustained any injuries. Lopez has seen the customer on several occasions since, and she often greets him when he is delivering mail.

Lopez never told anyone about the incident. His actions became known only after the property manager informed the post office about the carrier’s good deeds. “If I can help out, I’ll help out,” he said. “I’m not really a person that likes attention.”

In late September 2024, Meagan Murray, a carrier in New Hampton, IA, drove up to where she was going to park to start her next loop, but as soon as she pulled in, the Waterloo Branch 512 member saw smoke coming from a house. She called 911 and started walking to the door. Knowing that an elderly woman lived in the house and usually was home at that time of day, Murray banged on the doors trying “to see if she was in there, even,” she said.

She tried multiple doors and there was no answer, so the carrier moved onto windows. At this point Murray said, “smoke was, like, really coming out all through the roof and the foundation.” She knocked on a few windows, then she said she “tried one more time and then the lady finally knocked back from the inside in the window.”

She went to the doors to see if she could open them, but they were all locked.

“I have no idea if it was adrenaline or what, but I just was, like, banging on the door, like, wiggling the doorknob as much as I could,” Murray, a three-year letter carrier, said. “Jerking it, pushing it. I don’t know if it was God or what, but I got it.”

Murray walked into the smoke-filled house and spotted the soot-covered resident. The carrier reached out to the woman, and helped her out of the house to safety, comforting her until her family arrived.

As it turns out, the homeowner had just returned home from an errand and started the stove. A few minutes later, she heard a “pop” in the basement and then started to smell and see smoke. She couldn’t get the door between the kitchen and garage open, so she instead made her way to the living-room door. She had begun banging on the window when she spotted Murray.

A fire department investigation found that the electrical cord of a dehumidifier in the basement was likely the source of the fire, so luckily the resident wasn’t touched by flames. The letter carrier has seen the resident since, and she seemed OK.

“If you drive by the house, you wouldn’t think anything had happened,” the fire chief told the New Hampton Tribune, “but there’s pretty serious damage. If you think about it, when you have a fire in a basement, it’s going to cause damage to the floor joists for the first floor.”

The home was deemed a total loss, but the resident is still living in the same neighborhood while she waits for it to be rebuilt. 

Alexander Skomra of Buffalo-Western New York Branch 3 

Over the summer, Buffalo-Western New York Branch 3 member Alexander Skomra had visited Philadelphia, PA, and happened upon a fire station that was giving away free Narcan, a medicine that reverses an opioid overdose. Thinking that he would never know when it might come in handy, the carrier picked up some. On Oct. 15, only his third day carrying mail alone, his decision ended up saving a customer’s life.

Skomra had missed a delivery and went back to put it in the mailbox when a man came up to him asking if he happened to have Narcan. Remembering the Narcan he had in his bag, Skomra retrieved it from his truck.

They went to the living room of the apartment where a woman appeared to be overdosing. When Skomra arrived, the woman was making “this awful breathing noise,” he said. Skomra administered the Narcan to the woman by nose.

“Within a couple minutes, she was fine,” Skomra said. “She, like, came around and could answer questions and stuff. Before that, you could just see her eyes moving.

“I was glad I was there,” Skomra said. “I should have already had left that area. It was kind of weird that it happened in a way for me to be able to be there to help.”

Tiffany McCarty of Wichita, KS Branch 201

Tiffany McCarty, a two-year letter carrier in Wichita, KS, was delivering mail on Feb. 26 at 10 a.m. when a young woman suddenly ran across the street toward her. She yelled to the Branch 201 letter carrier, “He’s going to kill me!” and asked her to call 911.

“She was so scared and crying,” McCarty said. “She was hysterical. … She was only 21. … I felt like I had to do something right then.”

To hide her, McCarty had her sit on her LLV steps, which were facing away from the house she had run out of. As McCarty was calling 911, she saw the man whom the young woman was running from emerge from a nearby house. He had a gun raised just enough for McCarty to see it. After spotting the gun, McCarty crouched down on the floor of the LLV between a tray and her seat. The man looked around, seeing the mail truck, but did not notice her, so he went back inside the home.

“I was scared for her. I’m a mom, so I can only imagine [her] being one of my daughters,” McCarty said. She added that she didn’t feel scared for herself and felt as if she was “a bulletproof vest for [the young woman].”

An emergency response team arrived in about 10 to 15 minutes. After McCarty spoke with them, she returned to her route.

Following the incident, she was still delivering mail to the assailant’s house, which made her worry something would happen to her on her route.

“I was nervous for the simple fact that I was still on that route, and I wasn’t sure if he would find out that the postal worker said something, you know?” McCarty said.

A few days after the incident, McCarty found out from a police report that the man had been arrested for aggravated robbery. He had stolen toiletries, a charger, a debit card and a few other items from the young woman. McCarty is unsure of what has become of the assailant, but she is now working at a different station.

Theodore May of Buffalo-Western New York Branch 3

Theodore May was walking his route on Oct. 21 when the Buffalo-Western New York Branch 3 member came across a child walking down the middle of a side street near the busy Main Street in Buffalo. The carrier had just gotten out of his truck when the boy’s cries coming from the street alerted him that something was amiss.

“I was shocked,” the three-year letter carrier recalled. “You see a 3-year-old, you’re not thinking he’s unsupervised. … It was just him in the road … so I was kind of in shock for a minute.”

May knew there was a day care facility about half a mile away because it is part of his delivery route. May stayed with the child while a nearby resident called the business. The day care was unaware of the boy being missing, although May estimated that he had been gone for at least 10 minutes.

Concerned about the day care’s loss of the boy, May reported the day care to the Office of Children and Family Services, the agency responsible for child care in New York state. “I just want to make sure this doesn’t happen again to a kid,” May said.

Reflecting on the incident, May remembered that there wasn’t anyone around, saying, “If it weren’t for me, he probably would have been gone.”

 

Rafael Pozo of Arlington Heights, IL Branch 2810

Smoke coming from a garbage truck alerted Arlington Heights, IL Branch 2810 member Rafael Pozo of a fire as he was delivering his route on the afternoon of Dec. 6, 2024. The 13-year letter carrier saw the driver get out of the truck and attempt to put out the flames with a small fire extinguisher, but the fire had already reached about 15 feet high, so it was of little use.

After making sure that the driver was all right, Pozo called 911. Worried about the children who were leaving school for the day and going onto the residential street where the fire was raging, Pozo warned students and administrators.

Within minutes, firefighters arrived. They had only started setting up to fight the fire when the blaze reached the compressed natural gas the truck ran on, causing it to explode. Shrapnel flew everywhere, injuring three of the emergency responders, including a firefighter whose leg was hit with shrapnel.

“Those guys are the heroes in this situation,” Pozo said of the emergency responders.

One teacher was about to drive up to her house when Pozo warned her, and she was able to avoid the shrapnel from the explosion.

“She would have been standing in her living room when the truck exploded,” Pozo said. “Shrapnel flew through her living room window, destroying the interior of her house. She says that I saved her life.”

The shock wave from the explosion caused substantial property damage in the immediate area. Sections of roof and siding were blown off onto nearby houses and windows were shattered. Parts of the truck were found several blocks away.

Although Pozo was far enough away from the explosion to avoid getting hit with shrapnel, he said, “My ears were definitely ringing for a couple of days after that,” due to the extremely loud noise that came with the explosion.

This wasn’t the last time this happened. Exactly six months later, on June 6 around the same time of day and in the same part of his route, Pozo again called 911 about a garbage truck that was on fire. There were hundreds of kids outside for their end-of-the-school-year party. Pozo described the situation as being a lot “scarier,” so he made sure to warn them of the fire.

“If that thing blows up, you’re talking about dozens of kids getting hurt,” he said. “I was worried that it was going to fall on one of the kids.”

This time the truck driver avoided the explosion by dumping the truck load onto the pavement, preventing the fire from reaching the natural gas. 

The fire department determined that the fires had been caused by a lithium battery, which are not supposed to be disposed of in the regular pickup due to their tendency to ignite if damaged or crushed.