On December 1, the St. Louis area got hammered with snow. Over three inches fell in a few hours, on top of the six inches already on the ground from earlier in the week. USPS told mail carriers they could stay home if they didn’t feel safe.
Deanna Chatman went out anyway. “Something told me just to go,” she told KSDK.
Midway through her route in a Maryland Heights subdivision, she saw an older woman waving from inside her garage doorway. Chatman stopped and asked if she needed help.
She did. The 96-year-old had fallen trying to put outgoing mail in her mailbox. She’d been stuck in the garage for three hours with no coat, no shoes, no socks. Just pants and a shirt. She had no phone. She’d been yelling for help, but nobody heard her until Chatman showed up.
“She heard people, but they couldn’t hear her, until Ms. Chatman came to drop off mail and heard her and ran into the garage,” the woman’s granddaughter said.
Chatman called 911 and waited with her for 20 minutes until the ambulance arrived. The woman’s pants were covered in mud and scratches from dragging herself across the driveway. She’d managed to open the door to the house just enough to feel a bit of warmth, but she couldn’t get up the steps to get inside.
When paramedics arrived, they couldn’t get a temperature reading. She was too cold.
“Ms. Chatman 100% saved her life because it was so cold,” the granddaughter said. “There are no words to express how grateful we are for her.”
The woman has been recovering in the hospital since the fall. According to her family, she’s lived through two pandemics, multiple wars, and the death of her husband. This traumatic fall just got added to the list.
Chatman, who’s been with USPS for six years, said she’d never encountered anything like this. “I’m blessed that I got a chance to save someone’s life.” Because mail carriers are monitored on their routes to make sure they’re not sitting in one place too long, she had to call another carrier to explain why she wasn’t moving.
Once the ambulance left, she went back to her route. When she got back to the post office, she tried to tell her supervisor what happened but couldn’t find her. The granddaughter said that was probably typical. “It probably happens more than we know, but the mail people are helping people all the time. Like she did this and probably went on with her day. She didn’t think anything of it.”
A few days later, Chatman’s supervisor called her. “You did an awesome job. Her granddaughter said if you hadn’t called the ambulance, she wouldn’t have made it.”
USPS recognized Chatman with balloons, flowers, and the Postmaster General Award, which recognizes exceptional heroism. The highest temperature that day was 26 degrees.
