Stepping Up for Those Who Fall Down

What do we expect from our fellow man or our fellow woman?

Not much, really. When it comes down to it, all we really hope is that when we fall, a fellow man or a fellow woman will be there to help us get up.

Today we have two stories on this theme.

Special Delivery

As near as Patti Parisi can figure it, by the afternoon of Feb. 11, her 78-year-old mother, Aida Odenthal, had been lying on the floor of her kitchen for 40 straight hours, her hip broken in three places. She couldn't reach the front door. She couldn't reach the back door.

The pain must have been severe for Aida, made worse by the knowledge that her husband, a tough-as-nails retired Marine colonel named Joseph Odenthal, had himself fallen in their Springfield home a few months before. The 82-year-old weakened in the hospital and died without coming home.

These are not the ingredients for a happy ending.

But that week, Al Odenthal had decided to send his mother flowers. They arrived in the person of FedEx courier Kerri Crutchman.

What you should know about Kerri is that three or four times a month, his duties take him to Kings Glen Elementary School in Springfield, where Patti Parisi is the assistant to the principal. "He's such a nice person," said Patti. "He always teases everyone."

The school is about four blocks from Aida's house, and Patti was at her mom's one day in January when Kerri stopped to deliver some flowers. He did a double take: The woman he usually saw at the elementary school was someplace unexpected.

This might be why he was attuned to Aida's house. And though he wasn't required to get a signature for the flowers Al Odenthal had sent that day, Kerri didn't just leave them at the door. Instead, he knocked, and from inside came a voice: "I can't get up."

The front door and the back door were locked, so Kerri asked if he could break a window to get in. Aida shouted yes, and Kerri used his elbow to shatter the glass so he could open the door. He called Patti, who rushed over.

Kerri has worked for FedEx for 18 years. He has more than a few elderly customers along his route, and he said with them he likes to wait at the door rather than leave the package. That saves them from having to bend over to pick it up.

I asked if he would have been so diligent if he hadn't known Patti or Aida?

"I would have done the same thing," he told me.

Patti sent a letter praising Kerri to everyone she could think of, from the president of FedEx to The Washington Post. On Thursday morning, the letter was read out loud to all the FedEx drivers at the North Springfield station before they hit the road. Everyone applauded.

Aida Odenthal is in rehab now and, her daughter said, "every day getting a little better."

"If it hadn't been for [Kerri], Lord knows how it would have been," Patti said.

Drawing a Line

Another day, another person, another fall: Last Tuesday, Terrie Alvarez was rushing to Union Station to catch a MARC train home to Hyattsville. She noticed a man of about 50 lose his balance and fall in front of the station, where Metrobuses pick up and drop off passengers.

"I've fallen before, and it's so embarrassing, you get up so fast," she said.

This gentleman didn't. When Terrie asked if he could get up, he replied that he was too dizzy. She was without her cell phone but said she would get help.

Terrie hurried into Union Station, found a security guard and told him someone probably needed an ambulance. The guard followed her as far as the Metro escalators, then stopped when he saw where the man was kneeling.

"He just stopped short of the curb and he said, 'That's not my jurisdiction,' " Terrie said. She told him that all he needed to do was call a rescue squad.

"He said, 'Ma'am, I can't do that. It's not my jurisdiction.' "

Terrie then ran to the Amtrak police kiosk in the station. She said she was told by an officer there that it wasn't his jurisdiction, either. The patch where the man had fallen was the responsibility of either the Capitol Police or the Metro Transit Police.

By this time, nearly 20 minutes had elapsed, and when Terrie went back out she saw that the man was up off the ground and about to get on a bus. She doesn't know what happened to him, but she was curious: Is it true that police officers can't cross these invisible boundaries?

Well, no. Terrie happened to run into two people who seemed not to know that when it comes to making emergency telephone calls, it doesn't matter where you are or which law enforcement agency you work for. Anyone could have made the call, including Terrie, had she had her phone.

Union Station does have a welter of police forces: It's a train station, so Amtrak police are there. It's a subway stop, so Metro Transit Police are there. It's at the fringes of the Capitol Police jurisdiction. D.C. police are there, too.

Mike Petty, who works for IPC International and is director of security for Union Station, said he would remind his staff that people can be helped wherever they happen to fall.

"I wouldn't want that to be me," he said of the man who took a tumble. "If I'm lying there, I would want assistance."

My e-mail: kellyj@washpost.com