Letter Carrier Ross Brossart was recently delivering mail in a Grand Forks, ND, neighborhood when he spotted a fire at a condominium.
He sprang into action.
Brossart urged a bystander to call 911, then rushed to the building to ensure that residents got out safely.
His first stop was the apartment of Clayton Lamaack, a newly widowed 87-year-old who depends on a walker.
“Thank God for him being there,” Lamaack later told the Grand Forks Herald. “I’m so glad.”
Bunny Knopke had been expecting to see her daughters when she got a knock on her door.
She was surprised to find Brossart amid a swirl of smoke and debris.
“The mailman was awesome,” Knopke said. “He must have ran like a donkey.”
As Lamaack and Knopke contemplated life after the disaster, they told the Herald they wanted to acknowledge the Postal Service employee’s lifesaving actions.
Thanks to him, they said, their neighbors were accounted for and unhurt.
Fire department investigators blamed the blaze — which heavily damaged the entire complex — on careless smoking.