The Sunnyvale Sun

News

Postal carrier's good deed has echoes

By ANNE WARD ERNST

An uneven chunk of concrete in Sunnyvale bonded an elderly woman and her mail carrier recently when Rosalie Ramirez tripped and fell on the sidewalk in front of her house.

Ramirez, 73, had parked her car on the curb and was pulling groceries from the back seat when she stumbled on the irregular sidewalk. She scraped her right leg, arm and shoulder before her head hit the hard surface.

The former county worker was dazed. Her bad knees reminded her that getting up might be a struggle. Without something solid to hold onto, she was afraid to move.

Ramiriez lay there trying to figure out if anything was broken or badly damaged. She remembers, "My head ached. I felt dizzy."

Her paralyzed husband, at home in their house, could neither hear nor help her. Her cries were too faint to be heard from a distance. She had left her cell phone inside the house too.

Neighbors or passersby would have a difficult time seeing her, she knew, because the view from the street was blocked by her SUV, a tree and bushes. Although someone coming down the sidewalk would see her, there was no one about.

She thinks about five or 10 minutes went by.

Meantime, her letter carrier for the past five years was just ending his shift. Eric Rhodes was on his way home when he thought he spotted Ramirez lying on the sidewalk. Rhodes made a quick U-turn, hoping, "Maybe she'll get up."

"I heard the brakes of the postal vehicle," Ramirez recalls.

As Rhodes approached, he could see her arm and leg were bleeding. He asked if she needed help getting up. She said yes, but made sure he was careful in how he lifted her so as not to hurt his back.

Rhodes stayed with her for awhile to make sure she was OK and asked her questions to see if it seemed she had a concussion. Once certain Ramirez was all right, he went on his way.

Ramirez was so touched by her carrier's prompt response to her plight that she wrote a letter to his boss, the postmaster.

For his part, Rhodes shrugs off his action as just something a person should do. He hadn't told his co-workers about the incident, so, until Ramirez's letter came along, nobody knew.

Now they do, and Ramirez is glad. "When you're a public employee you don't get many compliments," she says. "I wanted someone to know that he had done something good.

"He didn't react, he acted."