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Fiordaliza Marte, a Brooklyn assistant principal, has only one explanation for the twists of fate that led her to a car crash at an unfamiliar intersection where she wound up saving the life of another Brooklyn assistant principal.
“I think I was just meant to be there,” she told The Post.
Marte, 42, who works at PS 23 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, is hailed as a hero in the community but has received little outside attention for her extraordinary actions.
After stopping at the accident at Metropolitan and Stewart avenues in East Williamsburg last Dec. 3, she performed CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a man slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious.
He was Melvin Martinez, 53, a beloved assistant principal at PS 257 in Williamsburg and baseball coach at the Grand Street Campus High School who won the first-ever honorary ESPY award for keeping his team motivated to practice and study during the pandemic.
A series of random shifts in her daily routine brought Marte to the intersection at the exact time Martinez urgently needed help.
That afternoon, a school staffer who lived in Glendale, near Marte’s home in Maspeth, asked the AP for a ride home. After dropping off her co-worker, Marte drove off, but soon realized her mistake. “I was heading back to work.”
She then turned back towards Queens. “It was a totally different way, not the way I usually get home.”
About 10 minutes away, she phoned her husband, “I’m almost there,” she told him. It was just before 6 p.m.
That’s when she stopped at Metropolitan and Stewart to make a left, and saw the two-car crash.
“I see these two teenagers come out of the car and they’re frantically screaming, putting their hands on their heads. I could tell they didn’t know what to do.”
Marte, thinking of her two young sons, made the turn, parked and got out of her car.
She looked at the driver. “The airbag was all over him. His body was not moving at all. I thought he had passed away.”
The teens — later revealed to be the driver’s sons — “were frantically going in and out of the car, touching his pulse, his neck,” crying, ‘He’s not responding!’” she said.
Marte called 911, then asked the boys the driver’s name.
“Melvin Martinez,” one said. She gasped – she knew Martinez as a fellow AP.
“At that point, I just got in the car. I forgot I was on the phone with 911. I put the phone down and started doing chest compressions and CPR,” she said.
Sitting behind the wheel, Martinez was not in the right position to administer CPR, but Marte had to do something quickly.
“I was on the passenger seat, giving him chest compressions from the side,” she recalled.
“I did mouth-to-mouth on him. I didn’t even think about COVID,” said Marte, whose husband was hospitalized with the virus for 19 days in March 2021.
It was the first time she ever used the CPR training she had received in the school as part of required safety protocols.
“Never in my lifetime did I think I would be placed in that situation,” she said.
Martinez suddenly showed signs of revival.
“He coughed. He opened his eyes. And his legs shook like you see in the training video,” Marte recalled.
“It’s Miss Marte, Melvin! It’s Miss Marte!” she told him.
One of Martinez’ sons was standing by the car door. “He was like, ‘Oh, he’s going to be good!’” Marte said. “I just hugged him: ‘He’s going to make it!’”
The car started smoking moments before the ambulance arrived. Medics worked on Martinez for a few minutes before taking him to Elmhurst Hospital’s trauma center.
Another blessing: Martinez’ wife, Lori, happens to work at PS 23 as an aide. So Marte called Lori to say she would take the teens to the hospital to meet up with her.
Martinez was hospitalized briefly, underwent physical therapy, and returned to work at PS 257.
Martinez declined to comment on the incident, calling it “a traumatic experience,” but in a statement to CSA News, the principals’ union newsletter, he expressed his gratitude.
“I would like to thank God for placing Assistant Principal Marte at the scene of our car accident. She performed CPR on me until EMS arrived. She saved my life. She is my family’s guardian angel. She stopped at the scene of the accident, not knowing that the two teenagers were our sons. She is the true definition of a good samaritan. I am forever grateful for what she did for me and my family. Thank you Ms. Marte.”
Marte finds it astounding that “so many things out of the ordinary” brought her to Martinez’ side.
“People know how horrible I am with directions,” she joked.
But Marcos Bausch, an assistant principal at Queens Metropolitan HS and close friend of Martinez, said Marte seemed steered by a higher power.
“We’re eternally grateful for her service – and for being there. Many people were driving by and not stopping to help,” Bausch said. “I feel like it was a God thing. This was not just a string of random events. This happened the way it was meant to happen.”
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