By:Angela Marshall
Girl hears from rescue worker she helped to feed
Susan Sims didn't know what to think when she answered the phone on Sunday evening Sept. 23 and heard a man, saying he was a state police officer, ask to speak to her 11-year-old daughter, Danielle.
He soon explained that he was only trying to make her birthday wish come true.
Unbeknownst to Sims, her daughter had snuck a letter inside one of the hundreds of boxed lunches the family earlier made for rescue workers at the World Trade Center ruins.
Danielle said she was so shaken by the recent events and the deaths of some of her friends' parents that she wanted to speak to someone alive from Ground Zero.
So when her mother wasn't looking, she went to her bedroom and penned a letter asking the rescue worker who received it to call her. She wrote "Sept. 17 is my birthday and all I want for my birthday is for you to be okay and to know that you are safe."
She tucked the letter, which contained her phone number, inside a bag with a bologna sandwich, an apple, a drink and two napkins. Then she waited.
The boxed lunch was one of 3,000 to 5,000 made by Rockville Centre homemakers and their children that were delivered by eight SUV-driving dads to ground zero on Saturday, Sept. 15.
Danielle's birthday passed and she had almost given up hope by the time the phone rang that Sunday evening.
Trooper Edelson of Liberty, N. Y. explained to a cautious Sims that he had received Danielle's sandwich and note and that this was the first chance he had had to call. He was calling on a cell phone from Ground Zero during a break.
The trooper, who could not be reached because of his continuing efforts at the site, told Danielle that he was safe, wished her a belated happy birthday and told her how much the workers appreciated the sandwiches.
He promised to sign Danielle's letter and mail it back to her.
After she hung up the phone, Danielle turned to her mother and said, "Oh, mommy, I knew he would call."
During the first few days after the attacks, Danielle said she was really scared. She said some classmates were crying and some had even lost parents. It made her appreciate her family and true heroes like Trooper Edelson.
Sims said she was blown away by her daughter's actions. "I was so proud of her."
Edelson's call was not the only proof of how much the rescue workers appreciated the boxed lunches from Rockville Centre.
Trina Firestone said she saw a rescue worker on TV, the night the boxes were delivered, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He said it was made by a mom on Long Island. "We really think it is probably one of ours," she said.
Firestone came up with the idea of sending in boxed lunches after talking with her sister, who owns a sandwich shop in Soho. Her sister had already delivered a bunch of sandwiches and told her there were "a lot of hungry workers down there."
Firestone said she and many other women she knew had been kind of paralyzed wondering what they could do to help. This provided the perfect answer.
Firestone rounded up a bunch of mothers from Wilson School to make sandwiches. On Thursday, they sent in their first batch, roughly 500.
People kept asking Firestone if she was going to do it again. So, this time she made fliers and handed them out at Wilson School. People she didn't even know started showing up at her house with 100 different sandwiches in bags decorated by children and bearing the words "We love you" and "You're my hero."
Boxes upon boxes began to fill her yard.
Men, many of them workers from the World Trade Center, volunteered to drive the donations in. A phone list was created so that they could keep in contact during the drive. And they were off.
After many check points, they finally delivered boxes filled with love from Rockville Centre.
