Looking for an angel

Pasquale Barone insists his life was saved by an angel sent by Saint Anthony. And that's the end of it.

Still, his daughter has spent the past month searching for the bicyclist who a month ago was riding by the boccie courts in the North End, where Barone had collapsed after suffering a heart attack.

The bicyclist stopped, performed CPR until firefighters arrived, then rode off without mentioning his name.

Virginia Del Vecchio has interviewed people who were at the courts, talked to others in the neighborhood, is preparing fliers to post, and has run ads in a neighborhood newspaper asking the mysterious rescuer to come forward.

''If it wasn't for this person, we wouldn't have our father," she said. ''We just want to say thank you."

Del Vecchio, 39, of Stoneham, said she even told her cousins, who own Mangia Mangia on Endicott Street, to ask their customers.

Her advertisement in the Regional Review says the family is ''looking for good Samaritan" and lists a phone number to call ''so we can personally thank you for saving a life."

Family and friends said Barone, 70, collapsed June 24 at 7:45 a.m. after the first toss of his daily boccie game. Doctors say that two clogged arteries caused a heart attack that deprived his brain of oxygen. Others who were there said in interviews that Barone's face turned blue as they tried to revive him by pounding on his chest.

Barone's lifelong friend, Angelo Pagliuca, 72, said that after several minutes he saw no sign that Barone was responding. Pagliuca said he shrieked in Italian. ''I thought he was dead," he said.

Then the bicyclist pulled over, performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and left just as firefighters arrived and unloaded a portable defibrillator.

The bicyclist's efforts prevented brain damage and cardiac arrest, said Dr. Susan Seward, Barone's physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.

''He could have died waiting to get the shock," she said. ''I'm very grateful to the passerby."

The boccie court regulars said that they had never seen the bicyclist before and that he has not returned since that morning. They described him as a white man in his 30s, who swooped in with a towel draped across his neck.

On Thursday, as the regular crowd gathered at the rectangular courts, one man speculated that the bicyclist might be an infrequent visitor from Brookline. But he was a stranger to most others in this small neighborhood where many Italian-American families have lived for generations.

''It's a tight-knit community; everybody knows everybody," said Barone's eldest daughter, Ursula Imbriano, 48, of Malden. ''We still can't believe this person just disappeared into thin air."

The vague descriptions witnesses have provided to Del Vecchio prompted talk of divine intervention, and Barone's theory about an angel sent by St. Anthony has garnered some support among relatives and friends.

Del Vecchio, a paralegal, is not persuaded and said she will keep searching until she can personally thank her father's earthly savior.

Barone, who after the heart attack decided he would like to go to Italy this summer for the feast of St. Anthony, grows tomatoes at both his daughters' homes. He and his wife, Consiglia, 68, baby-sit their grandchildren daily.

After undergoing an angioplasty, Barone is lively again and back to making daily trips to the boccie court, though on doctor's orders he's not playing much yet.

He left the hospital July 4 and now gets easily animated, pointing out his boccie trophy in his North End home. Also in the living room is a poster of an angel surrounded by dollar bills that he collected to fund St. Anthony's Feast in the North End.

''I'm very faithful," he said of the annual celebration. ''I want to see it one more time."

Benjamin Gedan can be reached at gedan@globe.com.