WASHINGTON – The grisly collision between a motorcycle and an automobile in Sanford left the motorcyclist’s leg severed about 3 inches below his hip. The 26-year-old man screamed in pain, shock and perhaps disbelief.

“It was extremely gory,” recalled David Heald, an off-duty Kennebunk mailman who witnessed the accident and who ran past the victim’s leg 25 or 30 feet before reaching him to provide medical aid.

When he got to the young man, Heald whipped off his own shirt to cover the wound and wrapped a bungee cord around the severed limb.

With a crowd gathering, Heald held the makeshift tourniquet in place – telling the victim to “hold on” – and waited an excruciating seven minutes for rescue workers to arrive.

“It’s the military thing,” said Heald, a 42-year-old Navy veteran. “They teach you to act and not react.”

His quick reaction was recognized Wednesday, just over a year later, as Heald came to Washington to receive his Hero of the Year Award from the National Association of Letter Carriers.

A broad smile crept across his face when U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine stopped by the luncheon to deliver his award.

“Yes, he used the lifesaving skills that he had learned in the Navy, but he also used the compassion that he had in his heart,” Collins said.

Heald said that while he was excited to receive the honor in Washington, he was more pleased the motorcyclist survived.

Soon after Heald arrived on the scene of the accident, a nurse advised him not to apply the tourniquet because that was no longer standard medical practice.

Heald debated with others at the scene over what to do, but in the end followed his gut instinct and the advice of two other nurses also there: He left on the tourniquet.

After the rescue workers left, Heald agonized overnight, questioning whether he had done the right thing with the tourniquet. But he had never learned the man’s name and couldn’t learn his condition.

The police called him at work the next day to tell him that Shane Pero, now of Shapleigh, had survived.

“I was flabbergasted that he lived,” Heald said. “And that sort of validated what I did.”

Heald “definitely played a major role in the guy surviving,” said Gary Utgard, one of the first paramedics on the scene, adding that because Pero did not lose enough blood to go into shock, “it certainly made his recovery much quicker.”

An independent panel of judges selected Heald for the postal union’s highest honor. Postmaster General Jack Potter and John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, also attended the award ceremony.

Heald occasionally sees Pero around town. “He seems to be doing wonderful considering he lost a limb,” Heald said.

Multiple attempts to reach Pero were unsuccessful.

“I would just hope that if somebody I love … were in the same predicament where they needed somebody to step up, somebody would be not only willing but able to do the same thing,” Heald said.