SI Advance

"It's been a pretty good week," said Joseph Pigott, who was to follow his Staten Island Firefighter of the Year award yesterday with a promotion today at LaGuardia Community College in Queens.

Pigott, 39, of Grant City, is to be bumped up in rank from firefighter to lieutenant.

To say the 11-year Fire Department veteran is worthy of promotion is a huge understatement.

Sitting with his wife, Judy, and among colleagues who came to the Island Chateau in Grasmere for the Firefighter of the Year luncheon -- co-sponsored by the Advance and the Staten Island Chamber of Commerce -- Pigott revisited the snowy January night last year when he pulled a 38-year-old man out of a blazing New Brighton building.

Pigott and other firefighters from Ladder Co. 78 were getting ready to attend the funerals of Brooklyn Firefighter Richard Sclafani, who died in a house fire, and Lt. Curtis Meyran and Firefighter John Bellew, who were killed after jumping from a burning building in the Bronx, when the alarm box sounded that a fire was raging on York Avenue.

Flames were shooting out the second-floor window when firefighters arrived, and Pigott heard somebody scream that a man was trapped.

Pigott and Firefighter Thomas Donovan followed Capt. John R. Graziano inside and upstairs. As Donovan pushed back the flames and Graziano searched the living room, Pigott crawled into a rear bedroom and found Thomas Marshall unconscious, with burns over most of his body.

Pigott and Donovan carried Marshall to safety. Regrettably, Marshall died a few weeks later.

But Pigott wasn't through for the year with his heroics -- in the vicinity of York Avenue, no less.

In December, Pigott helped Firefighter Thomas Feaser rescue a woman who had been spotted floating face-down under a New Brighton pier off Richmond Terrace at York.

Feaser jumped in to get her, and Pigott helped pull her out of the frigid water as about 30 firefighters from Ladder 78 and Engine Co. 155 aided in the rescue.

Borough President James Molinaro later presented certificates of appreciation to both men and their fire companies.

"This single honorary stuff is nice, but we work as a team," Pigott said yesterday as he held his Staten Island Firefighter of the Year award.

"They are the individuals who run into burning buildings when everybody else is desperately running out," added Borough Commander Thomas J. Haring. "Firefighters are at their best when things are at their worst."