When applause fades, heroes can struggle

'People started noticing me'
At the time, he was in the middle of a divorce and under stress, “and I became a better person. People started noticing me, and saying hi — appreciating me,” said the 40-year-old father of three, speaking from the stairwell of a Bronx housing development where he supervises janitors.

Autrey has seemed to take his instant celebrity in stride, calling his act the only decent thing to have done.

“How are you going to walk by someone who’s ill and just look — ‘Oh, well, I’m busy, I’ve got to go to work’?” Autrey said.

Rewind a decade.

“When you see somebody in the water like that, hopeless, and you’re afraid they’re going to drown, you’re going to do something to help them, so that’s what I did,” Santos, then a volunteer firefighter, said in the days after his plunge from the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Former hero advises keeping life the same
Santos’ troubles piled up quickly, however. On top of losing his job, a TV network threatened to sue him, accusing him of not sticking to his “exclusive” interview contract. Everyone wanted him on the air.

“My personality changed,” he said.

Santos, now 31, still lives near the bridge, north of New York City. He works as a plumber and is engaged.

One afternoon when a job fell through, he visited the old firefighter friends he credits with helping him get back to normal. “They’re the guys who were there for me when I went from being a superstar to being nobody, and they’re still there for me now,” he said, speaking by phone from the firehouse.

To this day, he is “petrified of heights.” Still, he climbs the 110-foot ladder of a firetruck “even if I’m nervous.” The woman he rescued still occasionally calls him from Connecticut, where she lives.

He had some advice for Autrey: “It’s going to take time, but try not to change, try to continue doing the same thing as before.”

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