OTTAWA - The physical scars Brenda Van Leyen wears after a vicious knife assault at the hands of her ex will likely fade long before the emotional trauma disappears.

The popular Canada Post worker was stabbed about a dozen times after completing her daily deliveries to the Shoppers Drug Mart store at the Barrhaven Town Centre.

She survived the attack, thanks in large part to a selfless act of courage from store assistant manager George Rusu, 21, who suffered a stab wound to his arm when he intervened in the assault.

A manhunt for the suspected assailant, Claude Legare, ended several days later when the man’s body was found amid the charred remnants of the Kemptville house the estranged couple once shared.

On Saturday, Van Leyen’s daughter, 17-year-old Libby McGovern, and the Shoppers Drug Mart and Canada Post employees who know Van Leyen so well, set out to lift the woman’s spirits with a fundraiser at the same store where the Nov. 6 assault occurred.

“Physically, she’s doing great, getting better every day,” said McGovern. “Emotionally, it’s challenging and it’s going to take a while for her to go back to the way things were.”

McGovern said she was overwhelmed by the support her family has received.

“I’ve never met so many people who were so happy to help me and my family so much, and I know for sure my mom would appreciate everything that everybody is doing for her,” she said.

At the top of that list is Rusu, who said the events of Nov. 6 are still as fresh as the sutured knife wound in his right arm.

As his floor shift was dwindling into its final hours that Friday afternoon, Rusu was stacking boxes of Christmas ornaments in the storage area of the pharmacy’s receiving bay when he heard faint sounds of a struggle rising above the drone of the heating vent.

“I came outside and I recognized Brenda. I just thought she was being robbed, so I grabbed the guy off her and swung him around and put him against the wall,” recalled Rusu. “That’s when he slashed me.”

It was only after Legare had run off, and Rusu was on his cell phone to 911 dispatch that he noticed the damp patch of red spreading across his shirtsleeve.

“I just did what I had to do in that situation. If that makes me a hero, then I guess I’m a hero,” said Rusu.

At yesterday’s fundraiser, store employees said they all wanted to pitch in to help with Van Leyen’s recovery.

“We wanted to let Brenda know how great we think she is, and we wanted to come together as a community for her,” said cosmetician Theresa Hunt.

Donna Doyle, who manages the Canada Post outlet in the store, said Van Leyen will probably return to work sometime in the spring.

In the meantime, a trust fund has been established in Van Leyen’s name at her hometown Scotiabank branch in Kemptville.

aedan.helmer@sunmedia.ca