Help hire this hero!
City aids man in job hunt
HE RISKED his life to save two people from drowning off Coney Island, and now the city is throwing him a lifeline to pull him out of unemployment.
Having read of Lawrence Bowers’ heroics in the Daily News, city Commissioner of Small Business Services Rob Walsh said he’s determined to get the out-of-work father of six a job.
“Surely, we can find a job for somebody who saved a man he didn’t even know, two weeks after he saved a kid,” Walsh said Monday during a meeting with Bowers.
On Friday morning, Bowers, 49, dove off the pier and swam out to the deep ocean to save a 65-year-old man who reportedly had attempted suicide, as at least 100 people looked on. Exactly two weeks earlier, Bowers answered the cries of a mother and pulled her young son from the treacherous surf.
Bowers has been unemployed since losing his job last year as a porter at the Brooklyn Cyclones’ MCU Park.
On Monday, Walsh introduced him to Matthew Langella, director of his agency’s Workforce 1 Career Center, who is hiring 2,000 people for the Nets’ Barclay Center.
“If I were in the Nets organization,” said Walsh, “and I wanted workers who go above and beyond the minimum requirements, you can’t do much better than with someone who risked his life.”