Contributed Photo
Fasano, Winfield with Crawford.
Back on July 10 Joyce Crawford was deciding between going shopping or, first, making a call to Frontier Communications to inquire about charges she didn’t understand on her bill.
She chose to call the phone company. That decision may have saved her life.
John Pelow (pictured), one of 250 workers in the large call center room on the third floor at the Frontier building at 310 Orange St., picked up her call. He just happens to have a wife who is a nurse and a son who is a paramedic. So he’s “home-schooled” in medical matters.
When he heard Crawford’s words becoming increasingly garbled, Pelow calmly asked, “Are you having a TIA [a transient ischemic attack] or a stroke?”
When her words began to come even less clearly, Pelow offered to call an ambulance for Crawford. She agreed. He grabbed another phone and made the call. He switched back to Crawford, speaking to her calmly for the five to seven minutes it took for the emergency medical staff to arrive.
Crawford had had to be hospitalized for a subdural hematoma, that is, some brain bleeding. She’s now OK.
The two had never met in person until Wednesday afternoon, at Frontier.
Pelow’s calmness, empathy, quiet heroism, service beyond the call of duty, and humility were recalled and marked in a state General Assembly-sponsored resolution presented to him by Sens. Martin Looney, Len Fasano, and Gary Winfield,.
As Joyce Crawford shook Pelow’s hand, she said, “I was so anxious to see the face of the person with the voice.”
It wasn’t just Pelow’s voice. What Crawford called his “accurate empathy” in their conversation might have made all the difference.
A nurse-anesthesiologist herself by training, Crawford said she had a fairly good idea what was happening to her. Yet she couldn’t express it to Pelow. He took charge, in a quiet, competent way. It was not an “aggressive empathy,” she said. Pelow didn’t say he was going to call an ambulance. He asked her if she thought he should. That made a difference.
“I value John’s approach. He had wonderful accurate empathy. He said, ‘I’m here for you.’ That meant everything,” Crawford said.
Pelow’s wife Anne said he came home from work. Neither on that day, nor in the days that followed, did he mention the episode.
When she got out of the hospital, Crawford (seated in photo) called Frontier to express her gratitude, leading to Wednesday afternoon’s ceremony.
Pelow has been doing the same job for 15 years, first with AT&T, then SNET, and now Frontier. This was the first time he had encountered such a situation.
“I was very calm. I knew she was in trouble. I wanted to stay calm for her. I didn’t want to pat myself on the back,” he said.
“I took it as part of my day’s work to help somebody out. I got off the phone, took a deep breath, and went on with my day,” he said.
How about having A jaws of life for the people who work under Frontier.I heard from people who work for Frontier and they told me stress from Frontier was affecting there health.They told me they was promised $20 an Hr but only received $9.60 an Hr.They told me you have to schedule restroom breaks, and if you were gone for more than a few minutes you were removed from payroll until you logged back in,They said there was a queue for restroom sign ins, with no way to hold your spot if you got a call before going on do not disturb. If you missed your spot, tough luck, you'll be sitting there.