Help him find his long-lost angel

FRANK DONATUCCI should've died on Dec. 9, 1998.

It was 3:30 a.m. and he was driving from his South Philly home to his 4 a.m. shift as a loader at UPS, out by the airport.

He was 21 and stupid, into booze and drugs, breaking his parents' hearts.

That night, he'd been partying before his shift, and he nodded off behind the wheel on Hog Island Road. When he awoke, he was headed into oncoming traffic. He yanked his Toyota onto the shoulder, right into the back of a UPS tractor-trailer parked there.

The Toyota went under the truck, its windshield exploding into a thousand pieces. Donatucci climbed out of the wreck and ran, fearing it was about to catch fire. That's when a woman - he doesn't know where she came from - ordered him to sit until help came. He touched his face and saw blood, overflowing puddles of it, in his palms.

He passed out and came to multiple times while waiting for the ambulance. The woman sat cross-legged on the dark road; Donatucci lay next to her, his bleeding head in her lap. By then, others were there too, but the woman is who he remembers.

When he started shivering, she put her own coat around him. She cooed that help was coming. She distracted him with small talk.

What was his name, she asked? Frank, he told her - and she said that was her boyfriend's name, too.

Did he like movies, she asked? Yes, he said - and so did she. Who were his favorite actors? Pacino and De Niro - yes, she agreed, they were the best.

Who were his parents? Where did he live? Did he have a girlfriend?

At the hospital she called his folks and stayed until they arrived.

Donatucci thinks she was on the small side, with brown hair. His dad, who spoke with her, thinks she was blond, about 25. Both feel certain she was a UPS employee. Mostly, his dad remembers how kind she was to him, even though her clothing was drenched in his son's blood.

Donatucci spent 10 days at Crozer-Chester Medical Center. It took more than 900 stitches to put his face back together, and he needed strong meds to ease the neck and back pain. He was prescribed four Percocets a day, but he'd been eating 12 at a time before the accident, so the smaller dose was useless.

He moved on to OxyContin, then heroin. His drug dealer came to the house, to spare Donatucci, whose face looked bizarre, from strangers' stares.

Six months later, his brother, also an addict, died of an overdose. Then his grandma passed. Donatucci's drug use worsened.

After failed stints at local rehabs, he tried a substance-abuse program in Florida. He did well, moved into a halfway house with other recovering addicts and decided to stay in the Sunshine State.

His clean and sober life came together.

He became a certified addictions counselor. He married a wonderful woman, Betsy. He became a dad - Brianna is almost 12, Frankie is 6. And he is now the admissions director at the Florida House Experience, a substance-abuse treatment center in Deerfield Beach.

At 37, his scars - including the ones on the inside - have healed, and he's made amends to those he harmed while in the throes of addiction. He has a blessed life, and he credits the woman on the side of the road back in 1998. He wants to thank her for staying with him while he vacillated between choosing this world or the next.

"I was hopeless. I could feel myself letting go. She kept pulling me back. She gave me comfort and stability," says Donatucci, speaking by phone from Florida. "I wouldn't have made it without her. She gave me the will to stay."

A few months after the accident, he went back to UPS to ask if anyone knew the woman's identity. He wanted to thank her personally, and his folks wanted to take her to dinner.

But the people at UPS weren't inclined to help. Maybe they'd had enough of Donatucci - after all, he'd destroyed one of their trucks. Or maybe the excuse they offered was actually reasonable: The accident happened during the busy pre-Christmas season, when UPS workers from all over the region put in overtime hours at the airport facility. It would be difficult to find the woman.

The police report of his wreck offered no clues, either. The woman wasn't among the witnesses interviewed. So Donatucci gave up looking for her, though he admits his addiction took most of his focus in those days.

Since then, social media has given us new ways to find each other. Last summer, swallowing his fear of looking "corny," Donatucci posted a photo of his old UPS employee-photo ID card on Facebook, and told his story, hoping his request to find his angel of mercy would go viral.

That's how I heard about Donatucci - someone shared his post with me - and that's why I'm writing about him now.

Because his angel of mercy needs to know that the addict she helped did not blow the chance he got that night. Yes, it took a few more years of disappointing himself and everyone who loved him. But he has emerged from that blackness intact.

"We're proud of him," says his dad, Frank Sr., who, with his wife, spends a lot of time in Florida these days. "He's just great."

I reached out to UPS on Donatucci's behalf, and a spokesman is circulating his story there. I hope Donatucci's angel is found. He wants her to know that the life she saved all those years ago was worth saving.

I have a feeling she never thought it wasn't.

Do you have any info about who helped Frank Donatucci? Contact me or friend him on Facebook.

Phone: 215-854-2217

On Twitter: @RonniePhilly

Blog: ph.ly/RonnieBlog