Leominster mail carrier honored in D.C. for bravery helping family during fire in 2019

LEOMINSTER – When Michael Ciccone made the decision to become a mailman in 2018, he thought the job would place him in “the middle of a certain things,” but he never expected what he was faced with on the evening of Dec. 10, 2019.

Ciccone, then 33, was at the end of a 10-hour workday when he helped a family of four make it safely out of a burning house.

For his actions, he was honored this month with a Heroes of the Year award by the National Association of Letter Carriers.

“I knew that this job would provide some level of excitement,” said Ciccone. “But I never would have thought that this would have been possible.”

Ciccone, a Leominster native, delivers mail through Marriam Avenue, a portion of his daily route that he covers as a “city carrier.”

Monday morning, he marched through the quiet neighborhood, which shone bright with sunlight and greenery. As he went from house to house, picking through his wad of white envelopes, he recalled the events from the afternoon in December 2019 – a dimmer and colder day.

Then a city carrier assistant, Ciccone was dropping off the last of the day’s mail at a house on Wheeler Street, a street he was covering for a colleague who had taken a day off.

Right before 6 p.m., only 15 minutes before the end of his workday, Ciccone heard a young girl call for him with tears streaming from her eyes.

“There's always little kids playing around, so a lot of times you're just wrestling around them to get to the door or whatever,” said Ciccone. “But she looked pretty concerned.

“She said, ‘Can you please help me and my family? There's a fire.’”

Ciccone said what he did next was "the right thing,” which anyone in his shoes would’ve done.

He described the situation as being “very fast.

“The thing that freaked me out a bit was the level of smoke,” said Ciccone. “It was crazy because I didn’t know where it was coming from.

“I made the 911 call and on the first floor I saw the girl’s mother, her grandmother and their pet pit bull who I helped get out of the house first.”

After they were led to the front door and out of danger, the women told Ciccone that a 90-year-old, the little girl’s great-grandmother, was still in the house trapped in the basement.

Seeing that the smoke was impossible to fight through on the first floor, Ciccone found a way into the basement through the back of the house.

There, he found the 90 year old battling the fire and refusing to leave until it was put out.

“I quickly learned this family had a lot of pride,” said Ciccone. “She didn't want to leave the house. She wanted to try to save it.

“’Forget about it,'" he remembers saying to her. “‘We have to go.’”

With their arms hooked side by side, Ciccone led the woman through the thick smoke, out of the house and onto the front lawn.

When everyone was out of danger’s way, Ciccone remembers feeling tense with an adrenaline rush.

“It was almost surreal,” said Ciccone. “Later that night I remember I couldn't settle down and didn't really sleep.”

Also trapped in the house were seven kittens, which firefighters responding to the scene brought out to safety.

While watching the firefighters giving first aid on the front lawn to the kittens – three of which didn’t survive – Ciccone remembers a firefighter approaching him with a question.

“’Do you live here?’ he asked,” remembers Ciccone, “I said ‘No. I’m the mailman.’”

Saying that out loud makes Ciccone snort out a laugh, followed by a smile and a shrug.

After the fire was put out, the four people who were inside the house ‒ Lorraine Kamataris, the 90-year-old owner of the house, her daughter Donna Kamataris, granddaughter Diana McCloud and McCloud's 8-year-old daughter, Nevaeh (Heaven backwards) ‒ were all displaced.

Since the fire, Ciccone met with them again, once at the post office three days after the fire and another time at the Leominster Fire Department, where he was honored with a Letter of Recognition in February 2020.

“Every time we see each other we give each other a hug,” said Ciccone. “They’re always very grateful.”

Ciccone was honored May 11 in Washington D.C., where he was recognized by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and the vice president the National Association of Letter Carriers, among others.

In a speech, the message about his job was clear - if the same situation were to arise, he would do the same thing again.

“Hopefully no more fires,” said Ciccone with a laugh as he got back on his truck Monday. “But in any case, I’ll be ready. Absolutely.”

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Leominster mail carrier Michael Ciccone honored in Washington D.C.