Farmingdale Carrier Bill Filiberto had just finished delivering one of the loops on his route on Feb. 17 and was doing a turnaround on another route to get to his next loop. As he did so, he saw a woman on her front lawn on all fours. He was unsure exactly what was happening.

"I didn't know anything about her. It wasn't my route," he said. So he drove down to a neighbor who was in his driveway and asked for assistance. Fortunately, a fellow who the neighbor was talking to was a fireman, and he returned to the house with Filiberto. But when they got there, the woman had disappeared.

"I started to think maybe she went back into her house," Filiberto said. Then he noticed a foot protruding from between two parked cars in the driveway across the street. "I went over and said, 'Ma'am, are you okay?' Then I noticed all the blood. It was all over the place. It was pooling so bad, it was actually going down the driveway."

Filiberto called 911 and then went up to the house and got rubber gloves, a towel and a blanket from the neighbor. "We covered her with a blanket," he said, "because we thought she might also be suffering from hypothermia." They turned the woman over and discovered a gash across the bridge of her nose. To stop the bleeding they applied pressure with the towel, until the ambulance arrived.

The woman turned out to be Theresa Bertucco, who had been taste-testing whether her roast beef was done and had gotten a piece lodged in her throat, which was later suctioned out by paramedics in the ambulance.

She was kept overnight at the hospital and released. She was so grateful to Filiberto that she went to the Post Office (despite two black eyes from a broken nose) on the day following her release, to personally thank him. She said that when she was choking, she knew, "The only way I'm going to live through this is to get out of the house and hopefully someone is going to see me. And sure enough, Bill saw me. So I was really lucky, he really saved my life." She added, "Not everyone would want to stop for somebody. They wouldn't want to get involved. What a beautiful man. I can't thank him enough."

Ironically, this was the first time she met Filiberto, as she had blacked out before he could help her at their initial meeting. It was an emotional scene for Bertucco, who kissed Filiberto and gave him a hug and later said, "If I win the Lotto, you know the first person that's going to get a big share of the money!"

At six feet, two inches, it's hard not to look up to Farmingdale Letter Carrier Bill Filiberto, but for Theresa Bertucco it's easy, considering he is her hero. (see Ms. Bertucco's letter on page 12)