Editor's note: This post has been edited to clarify Dave DeNoia's updated title as public works superintendent.

New London — Two employees of the Department of Public Works parks department are being hailed by their boss as “selfless and heroic” for their response last week to a medical emergency in Bates Woods Park.

About 10:30 a.m. on May 1, DPW employees Matthew Jullarine and Corey Elmore were working in Bates Woods Park when a “frantic, helpless, sobbing” young girl approached them, according to Dave DeNoia, public works superintendent.

The girl, approximately 10 years old, had been trying to talk to her father on a cellphone and told Jullarine and Elmore that her mother needed immediate help.

Jullarine and Elmore found the girl’s mother in a nearby car “convulsing, gasping for air and eventually slumping over the steering wheel, unable to communicate,” DeNoia said.

The woman was apparently having an allergic reaction to a new medication, the girl’s father told Jullarine and Elmore on the cellphone, and the girl showed the men a container of the medication.

“With focused direction and control, repressing all feelings of panic, both men went swiftly into action making emergency calls to ‘police dispatch’ using our portable radio system,” DeNoia wrote in an email to city officials. “Eventually contact was made by telephone and help was on the way with Matt (Jullarine) and Corey (Elmore) assuring the mother’s husband and daughter the nightmare would be soon under control.”

Mayor Daryl Justin Finizio, too, praised the response by Jullarine and Elmore, and said he plans to officially recognize them at a future City Council meeting.

“I am very proud of our employees for acting quickly and doing a very good job in assisting a resident who was in need,” he said.

c.young@theday.com

Twitter: @ColinAYoung