Broadway singer andBillionsactressMelissa Erricoplayed a hero in real life on Wednesday when she helped save a man who’d fallen onto the New York City subway tracks as the next speeding train approached.
Best known for her starring roles in Broadway’sHigh SocietywithAnna Kendrickand as grieving widow June Raichlein on Showtime’s hit series,Billions, Errico, 49, had just left her vocal coach’s studio when she heard screams for help from inside the 14th Street F train station.
“I saw two men holding on to another man on the tracks who was reaching up to them,” the Tony-nominated actress tells PEOPLE. “He was a sweet man. He was really desperate and scared.”
But he was too heavy for them to lift.
“I could see the two men giving up,” she says. “They were letting him go.”
Well aware that a train could come rumbling down the tracks at any moment, Errico knew she had to act fast.
“I literally hopped into action,” says the mom of three. “I came running over. I was like, ‘You can’t lift him? We got this.’”
Melissa Errico.Jamie McCarthy/Getty
Dropping her music and her bag, she grabbed the terrified man from underneath his arms and instructed the other two men to help her heave him from the tracks.
“I said, ‘One, two, three,’ really loud,” she says.
Together the trio pulled the man up onto the platform to safety – as the train careened to a stop minutes later.
Lucky to be alive, the man “had broken his foot and cut his arms,” says Errico. “I had blood all over me.”
The man was taken to a local hospital, say police. He is expected to recover fully.
Shrugging off her life-saving heroics, Errico simply says, “I’m a mom. Who better to save a life than a mom? I had the energy and jumped in to help this guy. I completed the chain. People do bigger things than that every day.”
Career-wise, Errico has some big things coming up herself.
On Labor Day, she will sing the National Anthem at the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament, where her husband,tennis star Patrick McEnroe,will be among the commentators for ESPN.
A singer known for hersolo renditions of Stephen Sondheim songs, Errico met with her vocal coach on Wednesday to review the four new tracks she recorded for the upcoming re-release of her2011 album,Legrand Affair Deluxe Edition.
A contributor toThe New York Times, Errico’snext essay about the highs and lows of life in the artswill appear on Sunday.
source: people.com
