Reluctant hero didn’t hesitate to help
Published: September 4, 2006
A few days ago, Flemington Post Office letter carrier Marcia Harrell got a message at work from the Woodbridge Township mayor’s office.
The office wanted her to call back and confirm a Courier News article that said Harrell had rescued Maria Lettieri, an elderly woman with Alzheimer’s disease, who had wandered away from her Bristol Avenue home on Aug. 2. Lettieri was walking with only socks on her feet and was carrying a fleece blanket under the sweltering midday sun.
They also wanted to give Harrell a community service award, which would be presented by the mayor during an upcoming Municipal Council meeting.
“I didn’t believe the guy on the telephone when he was talking to me,” said Harrell, who has commuted an hour to work from the Colonia section of Woodbridge for the past 18 years. “I thought it was a prank call.”
It wasn’t, according to the guy on the telephone.
“We live in a world where a lot of times people don’t show a lot of concern for other people and when someone does go out of their way, it’s a good thing,” said the mayor’s public information officer, Larry McCullough. He called Harrell to tell her about the award. “She could have easily driven by, said it’s not my problem. But she didn’t. She took responsibility.”
Before the township’s Municipal Council meeting Wednesday, the mayor will present Harrell with a framed proclamation recognizing her good deed, putting her in the company of other award winners, including many police officers and firefighters, McCullough said.
“It’s just representative of the thousands of good things that are happening right now that we’ll never know about,” McCullough said. “For all your everyday heroes right now, she’s representing them.”
Harrell, 42, said she still can’t believe the attention she’s received during the past month.
“My 15 minutes of fame is turning into hours and days and now the mayor is calling?” she said.
It doesn’t end there. Harrell received another award Aug. 25 from her supervisors in Flemington — a community service certificate and a $500 check.
According to Barbara Huff, an acting supervisor at the Flemington Post Office, the award has been given only one other time in the past 15 years, to a carrier who rescued a woman from a burning building on Christmas Eve.
Harrell, who describes herself as shy, said her supervisors gathered all the employees together and began saying that the post office received letters and phone calls about an employee’s good deed.
“I was trying to act like it wasn’t me,” Harrell said. “I was looking around like, ‘What is she talking about?’ ”
But everyone knew.
Despite Harrell’s attempts to keep the publicity under wraps, she said her co-workers had either seen her picture in the paper or had heard about the incident. Harrell was then called forward to accept her gift.
“I want to thank God, I want to thank my parents,” said Harrell, recalling her acceptance speech. “I just really wanted get off that floor and start casing my mail.”
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