Postal worker honored for good deed on the job

PHOTO COURTESY OF LARRY McCULLOUGH Colonia resident Marcia Harrell receives a community service award from Sen. and interim Mayor Joseph F. Vitale (l) at the Woodbridge Township Council meeting Sept. 5 for helping an elderly woman with Alzheimer's disease on her daily route as a Flemington post office rural mail carrier. With Harrell are her son, Justin, and husband Jessie.

Colonia resident

rescued Alzheimer's patient in 100-degree heat BY KATHY CHANG

Staff Writer

WOODBRIDGE - When lifelong Colonia resident Marcia Harrell received a message from the Woodbridge Township mayor's office last week, she thought it was a prank call.

"I was shocked," said Harrell, who has been a rural mail carrier at the Flemington post office for 18 years. "Someone from work told me that someone from the mayor's office in Woodbridge had left a message and wanted to speak to me. I said to myself, 'Well, I know that the other mayor had passed away, so it must be a prank call.' "

When Harrell called back, however, she immediately learned that it wasn't a joke.

The mayor's office wanted to confirm a newspaper article about how Harrell rescued Maria Lettieri, an elderly woman with Alzheimer's disease, who wandered away from her Bristol Avenue home in Flemington on Aug. 2.

Interim Mayor Joseph F. Vitale presented Harrell with a community service award at the Sept. 5 Township Council meeting.

"I did save her, but at that time I didn't look at it like that," Harrell said at the meeting. "It's almost like as a mail carrier, you see these elderly people every day. You see them as your parents and want to protect them."

Harrell said Lettieri would always talk to her, though in Italian, her native language.

"Most of the time," Harrell said, "I didn't understand what she was saying, but she would always ask about my son, Justin, and see how he was doing."

Harrell was on her postal route when she saw Harrell on that 100-degree day.

"It was very warm that day," she said. "It felt like it was 117 degrees. I saw a lady walking on Driscoll Avenue, and it did look like Mrs. Lettieri so I stopped by her house and rang the doorbell. [But] there was no answer."

Harrell went to see if the lady was indeed Mrs. Lettieri.

"I said, 'Mrs. Lettieri, what are you doing?' " she recalled. "So she started talking to me in Italian and asked about my son. But then I really looked at her, and she had only socks on and a fleece blanket around her.

"Something was wrong," she said.

Harrell called 911 immediately.

"I thought to myself [that] I can't take her home because she would wander off again," she said. "I knew I had to call someone, so I called 911 and stayed with her until the police came."

Harrell received a community-service certificate and a $500 check from her supervisors at the Flemington post office.

"You can't be too careful these days," she said. "I read about the people with Alzheimer's who wander off, and one landed in a New York hospital and one was found dead in the woods.

"She's [Mrs. Lettieri] a sweet lady," Harrell added. "I'm glad I was there before she wandered farther off."