Mr. Czartosieski: known on the streets of Westhampton Beach as Mr. Ski, math teacher by day, unsung hero by late afternoon. Though many know him only for his teaching and coaching, there’s more in Ski’s heart than meets the eye.

        It was a nice, cold winter day in 1980-something perfect for playing ice hockey after school, a regular pastime for the young Czartosieski. “I rushed home, asked my mom for the car to go to pond, and asked if I could take the dog with me. I had to get there early because you couldn’t play once the sun had gone down. I got to the pond where my friends had already arrived, and we began playing hockey,” Ski reminisces.

        Ski let his dog loose to wander around the lake as he always did, fully trusting that his loyal companion wouldn’t venture far. He and his friends were mid-game when all of a sudden, “We heard a painful, screeching, yelping, crying sound,” coming from the outskirts of the wooded area.

        Simultaneously filled with curiosity and horror, Ski immediately skated in the direction of the sound. Upon reaching the source of the screaming, Ski found something far worse than he could have ever imagined for the blood curdling shriek was coming from none other than his very own dog, who had somehow gotten her head caught in a live fox trap. “She was in the middle of a patch of thorn bushes with her snout completely encased in this fox trap,” Ski explains.

        Pumped with adrenaline, Ski had no time to consider his own safety and b-lined straight through the brier bush towards his helpless comrade. “I made my way down to her and with as much strength as I could muster I managed to pry open the fox trap so she could free herself. I gave her a quick examination and then returned to my hockey game.”

        “Looking back on it now, I realize just how lucky she was that it grabbed her on the harder part of her skull,” Ski explained, “She very narrowly escaped a horrible injury. I kept the fox trap to show some people.”

No good deed goes unpunished, as is exemplified by Ski’s horrible PTSD resulting from this incident. “It is so traumatic when you care for someone so much and they are injured like my dog was. For years I suffered from nightmares related to the incident. Night after night, I was forced to rescue loved ones from gigantic fox traps. As I aged the dreams only worsened, eventually depicting family members or close friends falling off cliffs, being shot in the front lines of a war, and being held hostage and tortured with fox traps.”

Word of Ski’s heroic actions have travelled far and wide, making him something of a local legend in WHB. Christopher Brown, a WHB graduate and current attendee of Suffolk Community College, who has a passion for melting things stated, “From what I can gather from the words of my fellow students, Mr. Ski performed an act of valor, putting himself in harm’s way to save the life of a beloved animal companion. Oh, what I would give to have witnessed it.” Brown continued to add, “I had always regarded Mr. Ski as simply an instructor and tennis coach. I had never thought that there might be more under the surface, an unparalleled compassion and caring for both people and animals alike. Now that I know what he did, he fills me with hope for humanity.”