An older Postal Service customer recently credited Merrick, NY, City Carrier Assistant Mark Wiesner with saving not only her life but her legs, too, after she was crushed in a freak household accident.
The woman was home alone when 12 boards of sheetrock stored in her front hallway fell on her, pinning her by the hip against a wall.
In a letter to the local Post Office, the customer described excruciating pressure, struggling to breathe, and rising panic as her legs grew numb and she realized no one was due home for hours.
Her only hope, she wrote, was Wiesner, whose attention she got by waving her fingers through the mail slot and calling out to him when he arrived to deliver her mail.
At the woman’s direction, Wiesner entered the residence through an unlocked back door, then safely moved the sheetrock off her and immediately called 911.
“He spoke calmly to me and said help was on the way and that he wouldn’t leave me,” the customer wrote. “I couldn’t believe he had pushed those boards off me by himself.”
Emergency responders soon arrived and took the woman to a hospital. After a five-day stay, she is recovering at home and receiving physical and occupational therapy.
“I shudder to think what the outcome would have been if a real-life hero named Mark hadn’t saved me,” she added. “I will always be grateful to him.”