A Massachusetts State Police trooper was reunited with a little girl and her family Friday who he helped last week after they were involved in a crash.
Four-year-old Danie Sullivan was with her brother James and her mom Jamie on Nov. 12 when their minivan crashed in Oakham after roads became slick with a rain-snow mix.
"I went off the road, I thought I could correct myself, I didn't and we ended up going into a telephone pole," Jamie Sullivan said.
A transformer came crashing down so Jamie Sullivan immediately worked to get herself and her children out of the van. The crash left Danie Sullivan with a large laceration below her left eyebrow.
"I opened her door," Jamie recalled. "She was bleeding."
Trooper Giuseppe Ciampa happened to be heading home from training at the academy in New Braintree when he came upon the crash and stopped to help.
"I was driving the road, I turned the corner, I saw the vehicle," Ciampa recalled. "I could see that she (Danie) was in pain and she was starting to drift. I wanted to keep her awake."
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Ciampa, a father of two himself, stayed with Danie Sullivan until the ambulance came to take her to an area hospital where she was treated for a concussion and given 12 stiches.
"For him to stay and stick with us was huge," Jamie Sullivan said.
But in all the chaos, the Sullivan family didn't get Ciampa's name and they desperately wanted to thank him.
So the Sullivan's took to Facebook this week and the search for their hero brought them to Massachusetts State Police headquarters in Framingham where the family was reunited with Ciampa.
"We'd just like to give you this first," said Jamie Sullivan handing Ciampa a handmade hero award, adding that the moment was emotional for both her and the kids.
Ciampa said he plans to proudly hang his hero award on his wall.
"To me, it's just something that any trooper driving home that day or any officer driving home that day would have done the same thing," he said.
Meanwhile, Danie Sullivan is now doing well and her brother James just suffered a bruise.
