For more than a decade, Winni Thompson has delivered their letters, packages and birthday cards, but on Friday the neighbors in North Baltimore had something for her. A small crowd waited outside the condos in the Village of Cross Keys to thank her.

“I’m nervous,” said Thompson, their longtime U.S. mail carrier.

“You’re nervous? You were like a superhero last Friday,” Beth Hehir said.

It was here on Bouton Green Court that the frightening scene occurred last week. Thompson had just parked her mail van and stepped out when she recognized a customer from her route. Only, the 91-year-old woman was sitting alone in a parked car.

No one else had noticed. But Thompson did. That’s why the residents joke about Thompson being their babysitter. Longtime mail carriers can develop a special bond with their routes.

Thompson noticed when residents forgot to shut their doors all the way, and twice when someone forgot to turn off a gas stove. She knows their names and the names of their children and their dogs. Over the years, she came to an uneasy truce with one grumpy pet boxer. Thompson considers Bouton Green Court her customers and her family.

She knew something was wrong with the woman alone in the car. Thompson had brought her mail for years, too.

“She looked like she didn’t know me,” Thompson said.

She ran around the corner for help. The woman’s daughter lived nearby. Thompson banged on the door, but no one was home.

Denise Galambos had left the country for what was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime. She was touring France when her cell phone rang.

“I picked up, and they said, ‘This is Winni, your mail delivery person, and I’m worried about your mom. She doesn’t look right,” Galambos said.

Another neighbor, Hehir, met Thompson at the car. By then, the mail carrier had roused other neighbors for help, including a former policeman and an assistant medical examiner.

An ambulance was on the way.

“Winni had been with her probably for 20 minutes before I could get there, just holding her hand and keeping her calm,” Hehir said. “She was just completely nonresponsive, so it was very scary.”

At the hospital, the doctors and nurses gave the woman fluids and a CT scan. They suspect she had a stroke, but she was released a week later and back on her feet right away.

“Her quick recovery was because she got medical attention so quickly,” Galambos said.

Meanwhile, the news spread through Bouton Green Court, and the neighbors wanted to show Thompson their gratitude.

“If she had not paid attention to the signs this could have been a totally different outcome,” Hehir said.

So Hehir made an award — a framed plaque for the “babysitter of Condo 1.” The neighbors collected for a gift.

When Thompson returned Friday afternoon with their mail, they gathered to present her the award and gift. In the crowd was her daughter, a friend and the manager of the post office.

“Y’all doing too much,” she kept saying, shaking her head. “I’m just glad I was there.”

The crowd clapped for her, and the neighbors hugged her. It was over in minutes, just a little scene of kindness and gratitude at a time when the country — and particularly its federal workers — could use more of these things.

Then the neighbors went back inside. And Thompson went on to finish delivering the mail.