Sometimes at the same moment.

First the worst: It's Sunday afternoon, and he sits on the steps of the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul because he thinks he cannot take another step.

The next thing he knows, he hears voices around him. Barely conscious, he has staggered up North 18th Street, toward Hahnemann Hospital, where doctors wait.

He makes it as far as Vine Street before collapsing in the road, gashing his head on the pavement, causing a crowd to gather, cars to swerve around him.

The voices are shrill.

A homeless woman keeps saying, "That's a disgrace. Y'all kept walking past him."

Someone accuses her of trying to steal Massaro's cell phones.

A man announces he called 911 three times before help arrived. And a couple argues over what to do with this bleeding 6-foot-3 behemoth in shorts, sandals and a T-shirt, who has crumpled like a baby.

"He's drunk," a woman says. Massaro thinks she's a paramedic. "Let him sober up first."

Not drunk, dying

He has a heart condition, a kidney condition, a lung condition, and more that have landed him in the hospital a dozen times this year alone.

This time a virus has brought him to the edge.

Sitting in his room at Hahnemann Hospital yesterday, Massaro pieced together what happened.

When he called his doctor, it was around 1 p.m. Sunday. He didn't think he could make the seven-minute walk from his Arch Street high-rise. He stepped out the front door, looked in vain for a taxi on the holiday weekend, then walked by the cathedral.

"I like to look up to the cathedral when I'm sick," he said.

He saw scores of homeless people near the library lining up for food.

One of them showed him something about the way Philadelphia works that can't be found in the thick binders he builds for political newcomers.

Massaro was bleeding from the mouth and nose, as well as from the cut in the back of his head. Even so, that homeless woman cradled his head and thrust her hand into his mouth to clear his airway.

An angel in rags

So did the man who called 911 and the driver who swerved around him, assuming someone would come to his aid, then doubled back to see if anyone had.

"I didn't see," Massaro says, "but I believe they arrived on angel wings."

The homeless woman actually put Massaro's cell phones in his book bag. And the others in the crowd stayed until paramedics realized he was suffering some sort of heart failure and rushed him to the emergency room.

Massaro was telling this story with characteristic brio, his raspy voice rising over the hospital TV, which carried CNN's coverage of the GOP convention. On his lap was a City Council resolution on "green jobs" - the wave of the future, he confided.

What Massaro wants now is to find out who these angels were, to thank them in person if possible.

He's hoping the man who stopped his car reads the paper. The 911 caller. The homeless woman, in particular.

If not, he's preparing to go back to Logan Square next Sunday to look for her when the vans come to feed the hungry.

He said, "She broke every rule, but the one about 'Do unto others . . . ' "