TAKE A BREAK: Heroes Among Us

For most heroes, being in the right place at the right time is half the battle.

Just ask Albany mail carrier, Shawn Magee.

Magee remembers while on his route once, he noticed "helicopters and cops around doing a search for something or somebody."

But he had no idea what was really going on.  They were looking for an elderly woman that had gone missing the night before.  On his lunch break, he saw a picture of the woman and then went back to work.

"I was only told her first name was Jjaunita and other than that, I didn't really know much."

He went back out to finish his route and at the 17th house, "there she was," Magee says, "sitting on the porch."

He called police and all those choppers and police cars converged on him.

At the 17th house on his route.

"You never think you're going to be in the right place at the right time," he says, "and then you just happen to be that guy."

Or that gal in some cases.

Fellow mail carrier, Jeanette Wiley, was delivering to Stonehenge Apartments in Albany and noticed that an elderly woman hadn't picked up her mail in a few days,  Jeanette was afraid something might be wrong so she alerted the the management office.

They entered the woman's apartment and found her on the floor, cold and dehydrated.  She had fallen and was incpapable of getting back up or calling for help.

That woman is fine today and resides in an assisted living center.

But even when not on the clock, postal service employees like Don Benoit, are lending helping hands wherever they can.  The 21 year veteran of the post office, Don was driving along the Northway when he came across a car that had just been in a bad accident. He stopped to help the woman inside who was crying hysterically.

Don recalls, "her neck hurt and her arms were tingly and I said I can't take you out then.  So I just stayed there held her hand till the ambulance came."

He even called her mom for her on his celphone.  He says it was just the right thing to do.

Which is something all of our "heroic mail carriers" seem to agree on.

Along with being in the right place at the right time.

See more of this story and other "heroic postal carriers" at the links provided on this page.