If you were looking for a working-class hero, you’d be hard-pressed to do better than the man who appears on today’s front page.
And that is even before your learned his name.
Meet Nelson Mandela Myers. He’s a sanitation worker - named for the South African leader - who was on his way to the 69th Street Terminal yesterday to head to his job in Norristown.
It was just before 4:30 in the morning when fate intervened.
Myers heard the unmistakable sound of a child’s screams.
What he did next is what landed him on today’s front page.
Myers, who admitted he was a little late for work, could have kept right on going. He didn’t. Instead he ran across the street and discovered a 5-year-old girl who had been abducted in Philadelphia and apparently dumped on a playground in Upper Darby.
She was wearing only a T-shirt, was soaking wet and shivering.
First, Myers offerered her his coat. Then he called police.
The little girl is now safe and sound, reunited with her parents.
Myers, a father of two, had a good reason for doing what he did.
“She reminded me of my daughter so much,” he said. He and his wife are in the process of adopting two foster children.
HIs wife, who joined her husband at a press conference at the Upper Darby Police Statio, couldn’t help but gush about her husband.
“He’s really a great guy,” Janie Myers said.
She’ll get no argument from us.
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