Interview: Hero catches a little girl falling from a 3-story window

The video is heartstopping. The guy who features so
prominently in it is heartwarming.

When Steve St. Bernard drove home from work Monday to his
Brooklyn apartment complex, he never could have imagined
he’d soon be a hero. But it was just moments after
pulling into his parking spot that he would become just
that, when he found himself saving the life of a 7-year-
old girl who fell three stories from her apartment window.

St. Bernard joined the Dori Monson Show to recount the
rescue. He told Dori he was met by some neighbor kids who
alerted him to the little girl dancing on a rickety air
conditioning unit. Somehow she had climbed through an
opening and seemed oblivious to the danger.

“All I thought to myself was ‘Oh God, let me make it in
time. I hope she doesn’t fall. ‘ And I’m just praying
that I catch the girl,” the 52-year-old bus driver told
Dori.

He said he didn’t have any time to think about
it before the girl plummeted three stories.

“I was just relying on instinct that I would be right
underneath her, that I could catch her.”

He did, cushioning most of her fall. The impact left him
with a torn biceps muscle. She was seemingly unfazed by
the ordeal.

“When I picked her up, she looked stunned, but then she
just smiled at me and I grabbed her and I held her. And I
ran inside the community room with her just holding her
and holding her,” he said.

Someone caught it all on video, which has now gone viral
and led to a non-stop onslaught of interview requests.
Surprisingly, the girl’s mother hasn’t reached out and St.
Bernard doesn’t know who she is. But plenty of others
have made sure they know how much he is appreciated,
especially his own 7-year-old daughter.

“She said ‘Daddy you’re a hero, Daddy I’m going to feed
you some soup tonight’,” St. Bernard laughed.