Margate Carrier Ties for NALC Honor

 

Margate Letter Carrier John Sylvain (right)  and Tampa Letter Carrier Jason Moss are the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) National Heroes of the Year. This is the first time that judges have selected two winners.

Each carrier risked their lives battling heat and smoke to save two residents apiece, trapped by fires in their homes in separate incidents. 

Driving up to a curbside box on his route on April 12, the South Florida Branch 1071 member noticed that things were amiss at his customers’ house.  
 
“I knew both gentlemen and talked to them every day,” he said. “I was looking for Mr. Hicks to yell, ‘Good morning!’ as always. But that was not to be.

“Someone yelled, ‘Help! The old man!’ ” Sylvain said, and he then began to see and smell dark, ominous-looking smoke coming from their home.

“I then placed my LLV in park in the middle of the street, locked up my truck, and ran toward the side door and went in to look for Mr. Hicks,” he said.    

A neighbor called out to tell him that the homeowner, Lou Didomenicis, was asleep inside the burning house. It was unclear whether the man’s octogenarian tenant, Donald Hicks, was there.

The carrier said he knew he had to go in.

He made his way into the house, and found the kitchen engulfed in smoke. He quickly located Hicks by the side door. “He was trying to find his way out,” Sylvain said. “I grabbed the guy and brought him outside.”

Then he returned to the house. “[Someone] gave me an extinguisher, I believe it was the next-door neighbor,” the carrier told WSVN-TV. “I got the extinguisher, trying to extinguish the fire. I couldn’t do it from the inside, so I asked [Didomenicis], ‘…could I break the window and try to get the fire from this angle?’ He told me, ‘OK,’ so I broke the window and started spraying the fire.”

Didomenicis later told WSVN-TV that, when he woke up, he witnessed Sylvain trying to put out the flames with a fire extinguisher. The homeowner was able to get out of the house on his own.

“Then someone said, ‘The dogs!’ ” Sylvain said. “I ran to get the dogs, but the smoke was too thick to breathe and see, so I couldn’t. Then I went back out for air.”

Four fire crews soon responded to the scene. The two residents survived and were taken to the hospital. Sylvain was treated for smoke inhalation and was hospitalized for four days. The house was damaged, and the two dogs inside were lost in the fire.

Firefighters said the cause of the fire was unknown, but the two occupants said they thought that it may have started with the water heater. Didomenicis now is trying to repair the house and get it back to livable condition.

Neighborhood residents praised the carrier in local news media, but Sylvain, a fourth-year letter carrier and five-year Army veteran, insists he’s not a hero. “I was just trying to help,” he said.

In naming Sylvain one of NALC’s two 2018 National Heroes of the Year, the judges commended the carrier’s selfless and brave actions during the fire’s “huge, dangerous exposure” and said, “He was going above and beyond his duties—incredible.”

Sylvain said he didn’t expect this type of honor, but added, “I just hope someone will see something good being done and pay it forward.”

 

Source: NALC