For Norfolk mail carrier, helping to save a life is part of the job

NORFOLK

Working his route several weeks back, letter carrier Lamar Rivers noticed something peculiar – two days of mail piling up in a customer’s mailbox. He’d walked Camellia Shores for 14 of his 19 years as a carrier and knew this woman collected her letters every day.

He rang her doorbell. Nothing. Rivers walked around the home, peeking through the windows for any signs of her. None. He knocked on a neighbor’s door to see if the elderly woman had perhaps gone out of town. They didn’t think so.

Rivers alerted other neighbors who eventually got into the house. They found the woman lying on the floor beside her bed, phone off the hook. She’d suffered a stroke and might’ve been there the last 48 hours. S he’s now recovering in a nursing home.

Rivers didn’t think to mention the incident to his supervisor, because for him, it’s part of the job. But it’s much more to Ralph Mani, a Camellia Shores resident who visited the L.C. Page Station on East Little Creek Road recently to make sure Rivers got some recognition .

“I think he did something that went beyond the call of duty,” Mani said Friday.

Rivers’ story is on its way to the U.S. postmaster general , and it could earn him some hero honor one day. But Rivers said it isn’t unusual for carriers to go the extra mile, so to speak, particularly in an age where people are living longer, and often alone. He sees himself as part of the community.

“Sometimes, we’re the only people they see throughout the day,” said Rivers, who walks the established neighborhoods east of Azalea Garden Road, home to many retirees and seniors. “They look out for me and I look out for them.”

Darlene Johnson customer service manager at the Page station, said she’s noticed that carriers are becoming that tie to the outside world for many of her older customers. Her station has 14,000, and at least 4,000 are senior citizens who live alone. They rely on her 30 carriers.

“Many of my customers set their clocks by my letter carriers,” Johnson said.

She’s worked at the station for more than nine years, and she’s heard of at least a dozen other instances where carriers have helped in an emergency, including noticing a house fire and alerting residents to get out.

Fran Sansone, communications coordinator for the U.S. Postal Service in Hampton Roads and the Eastern Shore, said she’s nominated 11 carriers since March 2006 to receive a nod from the postmaster general. Sansone has heard of carriers pulling unattended toddlers from traffic and grabbing garden hoses to douse house fires.

Rivers, 41, is a bit unusual in that he’s riding a streak. In July, he noticed mail stacking up in the box of an older male customer. Rivers went to a neighbor’s house; the neighbor checked on the man and found him sprawled on the floor of his home. Rivers said he was told later the man had collapsed and had been there a couple of days and that he might have died if Rivers hadn’t noticed. The letter carrier is a little uncomfortable with the spotlight and being told he’s saved lives. He prefers to say he might have extended them.

“I wish to say I’m just an angel looking out for God’s people,” Rivers said. “There was a purpose for me being there; timing was critical, and everything else just fell into place.”

Denise Watson Batts, (757) 446-2504, denise.batts@pilotonline.com