By John C. O'Connell
"I heard my name being called out as I was sitting at my typewriter working," the Village recreation department secretary said. She got up and walked out of her Firemen's Field office to find where the voice had come from that Oct. 17 morning. She found no one outside.
Moments later, the Valley Stream resident said she heard her name called out again. This time she went to the repair shop and saw Mr. Jacobsen lying underneath the heavy machine. "His face was all red. It was right on top of him."
Ms. Perrone, 21, said her father is "a real car guy," so she knew what to do with the jack that had been propping up the equipment on rails and had fallen when the Groundsmaster somehow toppled over.
"I knew the second I saw him that I somehow had to get this thing off him, and right away. I put the jack under the front of the thing and jacked it up, freeing him to slide out from underneath... It took less than a minute once I got to him." Mr. Jacobsen, a village employee since 1981, was taken to Franklin Hospital Medical Center and treated for a bruised hip.
Mr. Jacobsen had been lying on the floor of the repair shop while fixing the Groundsmaster, having elevated it using the jack and rails.
"Then the equipment, which has to weigh more than a thousand pounds, started to slide down the ramp, tilting off to one side and then rolled onto him," said Village Safety Inspector Bill Hartig. "He couldn't move under the weight of it; all he could do was cry out for help. ... I'm sure that soon he would have lost circulation in his legs, and then who knows what damage could have been done," Mr. Hartig said.
Mayor Edward Cahill issued a citation to Ms. Perrone last week for her action in saving her coworker from greater injury. In part, the mayor's commendation read: "Janine Perrone's courageous action and quick thinking helped keep a dangerous situation from becoming a potentially catastrophic one."
