WASHINGTON—Pulling a confused man out of a burning building. Saving a school teacher and dozens of kids from flying shrapnel when a truck carrying propane and natural gas tanks caught fire, and the tanks exploded. Saving the life of a customer who had been robbed and shot.
All in a day’s work for a Letter Carrier, it seems.
Well, actually, all in a day’s heroism for a Letter Carrier. And the National Association of Letter Carriers lauded those carriers and others as Heroes of the Year at a March 24 luncheon in D.C.
Every year, the monthly Letter Carrier magazine runs 150+ stories of carriers who, because they know their routes and their customers, keep an eye out for their safety, too—and rush to the rescue where other people often fear to tread. The judges pick the winners from among those stories, a tough job.
The Letter Carriers’ usual response to praise, year after year, is “anybody would do it,” union President Brian Renfroe said. Well, not everybody does, the crowd realizes every year.
Carriers “get to know their customers, and get to know when something is not normal,” said Renfroe. “They’re often the first to step up,” he told the crowd, including AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler.
Shuler lauded the heroes—and all Letter Carriers—for being “deeply enmeshed in their communities” to perform such heroic acts. They do so even as the Carriers and other public workers “have been tested in unimaginable ways this year,” she commented.
Shuler didn’t name GOP President Donald Trump and his mass firings of unionized federal workers and elimination of their contracts, but the crowd of union members, their families, and friends knew who she meant.
The award winners are “extraordinary examples of the labor movement,” Shuler added. Among the examples: Christopher Perez of Branch 693 in Westchester County, N.Y., the National Hero winner, and Rafael Pozo, of Arlington Heights, Ill., Branch 2810, one of two “Vigilant” award winners.
National hero Perez had to climb off the top of his truck, up to a second-story porch of a burning building, after passers-by in that retirement community told him there was someone inside, a visitor who was house-sitting.
He found the unidentified man, who didn’t want to leave. The man kept saying he had to go back inside, seeking his wallet, his keys, and his cell phone. Meanwhile, the flames and smoke from that burning condo threatened to spread to two or three adjoining condos in the complex.
“There were no police, no firemen,” yet, Perez told Renfroe in a q-and-a. Perez tried to alert the man to the threat. “Hey, you know your house is on fire?” he asked. “I couldn’t even get in the front door,” which is why he had to clamber from atop his truck to the second floor.
“Hey, dude, you gotta jump,” Perez told the 200-pound man once the two were on the roof of the porch off that second floor. “He got a little aggressive, and it was one excuse after another. I said ‘We need to go. You’re gonna die, and I’m not gonna die with you.’”
Perez finally got the man down to the hood of the Postal Service truck, “by pulling his pants down” and forcing him to jump. The fire department showed up to douse the flames. Its on-site commander thanked Perez, then told him he had to fill out forms detailing the fire and rescue.
“No, I got a route to run,” Perez replied, “or my postmaster will be mad at me. You know postmasters,” he deadpanned as the crowd laughed. Perez filled out the forms and answered questions after work.
Pozo, of the Chicago suburb of Arlington Heights, didn’t have to pull people out of burning buildings. All he did was prevent a massacre on Dec. 3, 2024. And six months later, he almost had a rerun.
Pozo was running his route that December when he saw a garbage truck afire with 15-foot flames. It was loaded with tanks of natural gas and propane. The driver was trying, unsuccessfully, to quell the blaze with a fire extinguisher.
The truck was right across the street from a school, and the kids were exiting at the end of the day.
Pozo stopped the kids and herded them far away from the truck. One teacher drove by to her nearby house and he told her to get inside, and she did. She planned to watch what was going on. He warned her away from her windows.
“Then the truck blew up. There was shrapnel and debris for three blocks,” Pozo said. The shrapnel went straight through the teacher’s front window and the house. Had she been watching through it, she’d be dead, Pozo said.
What Pozo didn’t tell the crowd, but did tell NALC for its write-up, was that he almost had a rerun, six months later.
Another garbage truck caught fire, on the same route, in front of the same school, last June 6. Same mob of kids, outside for their end-of-the-school-year party.
This time, the truck driver was smart and dumped his load on the street, as Pozo herded the kids and the teachers away, again. Police determined that a discarded lithium battery in the trash caused the blaze.
Other honorees included Central Region hero Sydney Billingsley of Dayton, Ohio, Branch 182, who saved her customer who was robbed and shot, and Tiffany McCarty of Branch 201 in Wichita, Kansas, the other Vigilant award winner. McCarty hid a hysterical young girl in the postal truck to save her from a gunman. There was literally no other hiding place. “Kansas is flat,” McCarty said.
Also honored were Theodore May and Alex Stromka, both of Buffalo Branch 3. May found a three-year-old who had wandered away from his day care center and was walking down the middle of a street. May contacted 911 and stayed with the boy until relatives arrived. Center personnel didn’t know the boy had wandered off. May got a “Vigilant” award.
Stromka was alerted to a woman in respiratory trouble. When he got to her, she had apparently overdosed on a narcotic. He had an anti-narcotic medication, Narcan, in his bag, and gave it to her nasally. She recovered and became coherent.
Jaime Lopez of Oklahoma City won Western Region honors. With help from a maintenance man who had a spare house key, they rescued a deaf woman from a building emitting smoke. She didn’t hear the fire alarm or realize there was a threat. The fire, from a faulty wire, was quickly quenched.
And Eastern Region hero Kyle Quillen of Cherry Hill, N.J., Branch 540, rescued a woman, her baby, and the dog from the porch of their fiery house. The two-alarm blaze gutted it.
She was “petrified,” Quillen said, so he created a “leash” of sorts for the dog, gave that to a neighbor, held the baby in his arms, and led the woman away with her head tucked in his shoulder to protect her from the smoke.
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