While 62% of Americans love checking the mailbox for mail, not everyone has as much of a reason to love their mail carrier. According to a recent NBC News report, Tommy Hope, a 66-year-old resident of Alabama, suffered a terrible fall in his home. With several broken bones and no way to reach a method of contact, he was trapped with no food or water for 10 days.
Hope may have died there if it wasn’t for Cissy Cartwright, his mail carrier. Having worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 20 years, Cartwright knew that it was unusual that Hope had not checked his mailbox for that long. She also knew that Hope had a bad back. So Cartwright drove up Hope’s long driveway to his secluded home, where she saw that the front door was wide open. She found that he’d slid himself to the open doorway to catch rainwater to drink.
Since Hope had no family in the area and couldn’t reach the phone, he had to get creative to survive. But he wouldn’t have lasted long if it weren’t for Cartwright.
“I knew she would come,” Hope told Postmaster Sherry Hughes. “She saved my life.”
U.S. postal workers carry many things, from the 580,821,917+ daily letters, to the 27,397,260 business cards printed every day. But we rarely take the time to stop and thank them for the things they do. In Hope’s case, appreciating his mail carrier was the decision that saved his life. Cartwright says:
“He has to be a strong man because to do some of the things he did to survive, it was just amazing to me,” she said. “He calls me his hero and if that’s what he wants to say, I’m good with it. But I don’t feel like a hero. I was just at the right place at the right time.”