On some days, fate reaches out and grabs you. Recently, fate fell out of a window and landed right on Lisa Harrell.
The Albany, NY, letter carrier was at an apartment house on her route about three hours earlier than usual because she was delivering an Express Mail package. As she walked to the building, she noticed a one-year-old girl in an open second-story window. Harrell looked down, and then felt a heavy object hit her shoulder. Instinctively reaching out, she caught the child, who had fallen out of the window.
The girl, cushioned from the fall by Harrell’s body, was unharmed. The mother retrieved her daughter, but not before Harrell admonished her. “I told her she should never have had that window open,” she said.
The incident was widely reported in the national media. Harrell appeared on three nationally-broadcast talk shows and received a congratulatory telephone call from Postmaster General Jack Potter, which she said touched her and left her in tears.
“She’s a hero,” said Albany Postmaster David Yanni. “No,” Harrell said. “I was just in the right place at the right time.”
