BELINDA SPOONER was trapped.
Foot surgery kept her from descending 19 flights of stairs. She was stuck in darkness inside her Washington Heights high-rise apartment without water because the building’s electrically powered water pump was inoperable.
“My thirst was incredible,” said the 49-year-old woman, whose terrified daughter Kahlila, 14, was too afraid to go down the building’s pitch-black, windowless stairs.
Desperation set in. Spooner seriously considered sliding down the stairs on her rear end.
But help arrived in an unusual form for Spooner and dozens of other disabled and elderly residents at the Bridge Apartments on St. Nicholas Avenue at 179th Street.
Tenants Dennis Bowers, 44, and Marvin Owens, 37, armed with flashlights, candles and huge hearts, trekked up and down the stairway more than a dozen times delivering food, water and security to many of the building’s residents.
They knocked on doors to make sure some of the long-time elderly residents were OK.
They stood guard at the building’s entrance to make sure hooligans roaming the streets didn’t try to take advantage inside the 32-story building.
At first glance, Bowers and Owens looked like derelicts – they usually hang out in front of the building and drink beer. Residents call them the building’s unofficial doormen.
Despite their drawbacks, Bowers and Owens responded to the crisis in a neighborly fashion. Unfailing and honest help – free of charge.
“When I saw them, I was very happy,” Spooner said, smiling and calling the two men lifesavers.
Owens said he helped because it was the neighborly thing to do – many of the elderly watched him grow up.
“It was the right thing to do,” Owens said. “I was brought up knowing you have to help people. If I could do something to help someone and put a smile on their face – that makes my day.”
Blanche Collins, towing several bags of groceries, had a smile on her face too when she saw Bowers and Owens outside the building after returning from a Washington Heights church where she preaches.
The elderly woman lives on the 22nd floor and her main concern was husband, Chester, whose bad back rendered him immobile.
Cell-phone calls to her husband couldn’t go through because the phone lines in the building were dead.
She decided to walk up.
Owens took the lead with a flashlight. Collins was in the middle and Bowers – who has heart trouble – followed with a candle.
“Whew, thank you, Jesus,” Collins said after reaching her floor.
“She told us that God will bless us for what we are doing,” Bowers fondly remembers her saying.
But their job wasn’t finished. They figured they could knock on doors, especially those of the elderly and disabled, to make sure the tenants were alive, if they needed any food or water.
They knocked on the eighth-floor apartment of Linda Chisolm, a 44-year-old who suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome after a push-in robbery six years ago in which she was bound and gagged.
“I was petrified,” said Chisolm, who used her couch and several chairs to barricade herself inside the apartment.
Ms. Betty E., a 51-year-old nurse, remembered a time when Bowers and Owens weren’t around.
“People were afraid because the 1977 blackout made it impossible to get home,” she said. “A lot of people in the building were glad that these guys were there to help.”