Mailman praised for rescue
Published: October 18, 2006
Edward Loyas doesn’t recall how long he lay on the floor of his Wallington home. The 76-year-old stroke survivor was semiconscious, a victim of a fierce summer heat wave.
His three-day absence seemed unnoticed by neighbors and workers in downtown Wallington, a small Bergen County community. But it sounded an alarm for Domenick DiBernardo, a postal letter carrier who alerted Wallington police after watching the senior’s mail pile up for several days.
“I went next door to ask if anybody had seen him,” DiBernardo said. “Nobody had. That’s when I went to the police.”
Outside the post office in Wallington, United States Postal Service officials and others honored DiBernardo yesterday for his role in saving Loyas’ life.
The 49-year-old letter carrier lives and works in Wallington. He attended the ceremony with his wife, Joan, and 8-year-old daughter, Emily, and posed for photos, then said the attention humbled and overwhelmed him.
“I just did what had to be done; we all would have done it,” DiBernardo said, nodding toward a handful of smiling co-workers gathered nearby. “We all look out for the elderly.”
Media accounts support his claim, with no shortage of stories about letter carriers who have rescued patrons across the country. They include a Providence, R.I., carrier who roused two people from a blazing house fire and an East St. Louis, Ill., carrier who found an elderly woman at the bottom of her basement stairs, where she lay for two days with a broken hip.
Uncollected mail often draws suspicion.
DiBernardo said he peered into the windows of the Maple Avenue home on Aug. 3 but saw no sign of Loyas, his 20-year patron, whose mail gathered on the porch for three days.
Minutes later he and Wallington police officers Paul Stolarz and Piotr Zagaja searched the home after one officer entered through a window. They spotted Loyas, a retired Clifton public school teacher and counselor, collapsed on a living room floor. He was unresponsive.
“He was dehydrated and incoherent,” said Wallington Police Director Anthony Benevento. “My guys say, if it wasn’t for Domenick, he would be dead.”
On the same day, an elderly couple were found dead in Newark, the windows of their apartment closed in the scorching heat. In New York City, the chief medical examiner’s office attributed 37 deaths to the heat from Aug. 1 to 4.
Loyas was revived by emergency squad volunteers and taken to a local hospital in serious condition. Yesterday, he said he was still recovering and was unable to attend the ceremony. But speaking through his front door, which he opened a crack, Loyas had nothing but praise for his mailman.
“I deeply appreciated his kindness,” Loyas said. “He’s a very helpful person, a very kind person. I told him I owe him more than I can ever repay him.”
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