The man who saved New York

BLEEDING profusely from knife wounds, including a deep gash across the back of his head, acquired while sitting in a dark and powerless subway car under Times Square, Joseph Lozito could think about only one thing.

His wife, Andrea, and their two young sons, in their sturdy, middle-class home back in Northeast Philadelphia.

"I was approached by a female police officer - I grabbed her by the arm and said, 'Do you have a child?' " Lozito recalled yesterday in an interview. " 'I can't die on this train. I have two sons.' "

Not only did the 40-year-old rail commuter and Lincoln Center ticket-taker not die on that train Saturday morning after his brief, bloody encounter and takedown of the alleged serial stabber who'd terrorized the Big Apple for 28 hours, but it was also the beginning of a new life for Joe Lozito: The man who saved New York.

In his first full day back in Philadelphia yesterday, Lozito enjoyed the kind of whirlwind you might expect for a subway hero who helped New York cops finally bring down Maksim Gelman, 23, accused of psychotically slashing three people to death and fatally mowing down a fourth during a carjacking.

A steady stream of TV trucks cruised up to the Lozito driveway just off Bustleton Avenue, and one station - Fox 29 - delighted the Lozitos and especially their kids with a surprise in-studio appearance by Swoop, the Eagles mascot.

Of course, it was hard for Philly to top the treat that the longtime mixed-martial-arts fanatic got earlier this week in New York - a visit from Dana White, president of Ultimate Fighting Championship.

But Lozito - who grew up in Queens and then on Long Island before coming to Philadelphia a dozen years ago to work for the now-defunct Fleer trading-card company - feels a special bond to the City of Brotherly Love; he came back here even after his 2005 Fleer layoff forced him to take a job in Manhattan.

"I gotta tell you that it's the people," Lozito said of Philadelphia, noting that he had tried living in central Jersey for a couple of years and couldn't hack it (in part, he says, because the local deli didn't carry the People's Paper). "It's a blue-collar town. I love it here because the people are so real."

Except that now - at least for Lozito - Philly is living up to its nickname as the City That Loves You Back.

Lozito, who normally drives to Hamilton, N.J., for a train-and-subway commute to Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall, where he's a unionized ticket-taker, will be spending some extra time in Philadelphia while he recovers from his wounds.

He said he's feeling fairly good but still has some pain where Gelman gashed him under his left eye, and some of his scars on his head and left arm probably will be permanent.

He's eager to get back to work - "just so my life will get back some semblance of normal routine" - but doesn't yet know exactly when that will happen.

He also doesn't know how some news reports pegged him as a skilled practitioner of martial arts, when in reality he's just a couch-potato Ultimate Fighting Championship fanatic who pays $45 a month to watch his favorite sport on pay-per-view. He obviously learned something, though, because it was an ultimate-fighting move - a leg sweep - that brought Gelman to the floor of the subway train, where a police officer finished the job of subduing him.

Lozito - a big guy, about 6 feet 1, 270 pounds - said that he may also never know why Gelman decided to lunge at him with a knife, seconds after he climbed aboard the same No. 3 train that Lozito had just boarded at Penn Station and was turned away from the motorman's booth by two cops.

"That is the million-dollar question, my man," he said, adding with a laugh: "Maybe he just went after the ugliest guy on the train."

It was the same sense of humor he displayed a few hours after the attack, from his hospital bed. His wife was just finishing up at her part-time job keeping books at Northeast Racquet Club and Fitness Center Saturday morning when - after ignoring several calls from an unknown number that turned out to be the NYPD - she got a call from her husband. She initially thought he was being "a jokester" again when he said he was at Bellevue Hospital.

Andrea Lozito drove to Manhattan with her boys - ages 7 and 10 - and raced into her husband's room. "I already got your Valentine's Day gift," he told her, "so you don't have to worry about it."

A jokester.

But a courageous one. "He's a selfless person," Andrea Lozito said. "He puts everybody before himself. He's like that every day."

That said, there is one person that Lozito does not feel brotherly love for, and that is the alleged killer, Gelman. Lozito said that a part of him is already ready to put the incident behind him, but another part of him is eager to confront his attacker in a courtroom.

"That son of a bitch took his best shot, and I'm still here," Lozito said last night.

"I will do anything I can to put that animal away for life."