It’s no surprise that friends and neighbors have been at the side of Grace and Gregg Cosgrove throughout their darkest hours this week.

It’s what people do in Pearl River, the “Town of Friendly People.”

But it’s more than friendship. It’s love, compassion, understanding and faith, all combined in a community’s heart large enough to wrap around a family — or families — in grief.

There was shock and an outpouring of love when Paula Bohovesky was first missing in 1980 and then found brutally slain the next morning. It’s a love and compassion renewed on anniversaries of her death and every two years since 2005, when her mother Lois and brother Peter have needed help to keep her killers behind bars.

We saw it 10 times over in the hours and days after Sept. 11, 2001, when the hamlet suffered a crushing blow, losing 10 present or former residents including members of the FDNY and the NYPD.

The love for Billy Kayser, who died in an auto crash in 2003, showed when his Pearl River teammates played their baseball season with his uniform jersey hanging in their dugout. And it still shows each year in the Billy Kayser Memorial Little League Tournament.

People stood in line for hours to pay their respects almost a year ago for Bill Harris, who devoted himself to his community and provided steel from Ground Zero for so many Sept. 11 Memorials. They did the same for Liz Houston, a local girl who married a local legend and became one herself for her valiant battle against a killer disease. Throughout her illness she was embraced and comforted by her hometown, just as her extended family was following the young mother’s death.

It’s the kind of thing that happens, perhaps on a smaller, more private, but every bit as meaningful a scale, day in and day out in a hamlet that cares so deeply.

And now, blue ribbons are sprouting across Pearl River, a show of love and solidarity with the Cosgroves in their time of unimaginable pain and sorrow following the death of their son, Chance.

It’s what Pearl River does all too well, all too often — and will assuredly do again — whenever there’s a need for the kind of love we know lives there.

It’s pretty miraculous when you come down to it that Haverstraw is in the kind of financial shape reflected in it’s latest outside audit.

Better yet, the town quickly moved to correct the only deficiencies auditors found in the 2007 report on town fiscal health.

It’s all remarkable because of one word — Mirant.

The energy company has devastated local taxpayers and municipalities with its continuing tax assessment challenges.  Never happy with a victory, they’ve now looking for another reduction of their assessments.

Haverstraw did what it could in advance of the settlement of the largest of those challenges a few years back and they’ve worked hard — as reflected in their audits and the changes they’ve made — to get through to this point.

But with Mirant always hovering like a huge storm cloud, it’s hard to imagine what the future might bring.

I have no mixed feeling about the release of convicted Pan Am 103 bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi by Scottish authorities.

He’s supposedly terminally ill and was released earlier today on “compassionate” grounds.

Compassion should have extended no farther than providing him appropriate medical care until he died in prison.

There was no compassion for the lives of the 270 who died when the jet was bombed, crashing to the ground in Lockerbie, Scottland with 189 Americans aboard.

His release is an affront to the U.S., to all the families of those killed on Pan Am 103 and to all of humanity.

Inhumane acts simply don’t deserve compassion for those who orchestrate or take part in them.

I’ll admit I was surprised to hear late this morning that former Giant Plaxico Burress had accepted a deal that will land him in jail for two years.

I expected he’d take his chances, hoping a jury might see a reason to give him a break.

I’m conflicted over his sentence. On one hand, I feel like shooting himself, dealing with the injury, the break with the Giants after their Super Bowl success and facing the public humiliation over his stupidity has been punishment enough.

He may even have been singled out as an example by both Mayor Bloomberg and the police because of his celebrity. But where does this end?

I followed the on-field heroics and off-field legal problems of West Virginia University football standouts Chris Henry and Adam “Pacman” Jones from their days in Morgantown to their time in the National Football League. Both had multiple brushes with the law and neither one —even after repeated second chances — got that they had to change their act.

Jones, for one, couldn’t stay away from clubs and the trouble that often lurks in that atmosphere even when his future in football depended on it.

So there was Burress, out clubbing, and packing a loaded gun — possibly because he saw himself as a target. But if you go places where you feel threatened, the simple solution is to stay away and party at home. Failing that, let a professional bodyguard tag along to fend off overzealous fans or macho idiots out to pick a fight with a star.

It’s a shame that talent self-destructs so often. Michael Vick did and so did his brother, who many believed was even more talented.

Now Burress has cut a deal that he has to find disappointing. He’ll lose two critical years from his pro career, leaving him to hope for a comeback in his mid-30s.

But even before a cell door closes behind him, another door has opened.

As it suspended the wide receiver, the NFL announced that he would be reinstated after his prison term.

Perhaps they don’t get it, either.

Twice in two days I’ve been heading east on Route 59 in Nanuet and had a close call with cars coming off the southbound exit from the New York State Thruway opposite Grandview Avenue.

Yesterday I was first in line, waiting for the light to change in the middle of three eastbound lanes. When the light went green, the three of us across started forward only to find a wave of cars coming off the ramp and making the left turn in front of us to head east on Route 59.

Then again this morning, the same thing happened, except that this time there were a couple of trucks in the mix cutting in front of us.

Yesterday, I chalked it up to a handful of people in a hurry who all blew through an amber light turning red.

But with it happening again this morning, I started wondering if something might be wrong with the timing of the lights.

When I reached the office, I spoke with Clarkstown Police spokesman Sgt. Harry Bauman, who said he wasn’t aware of other calls from concerned motorists.

He planned to have the spot checked this morning, but in the meantime, I’d urge people to count off a couple of Mississippis before heading through the intersection when the light goes green.

The story of a 76-year-old retired bus driver who believes she’s been tricked into selling her home is so convoluted that it’s taking several levels of courts to figure out what really happened.

In the most simple terms, Venera Held says she didn’t intent to sell her home to Michael Goldstein, just the right of first refusal if she ever decided to sell. He, of course, says she knew what she was signing and that she knew she was selling the home.

What actually transpired is so clouded that there have even been criminal charges brought and dismissed, a decision that is under appeal.

The property may be home to Held, but it’s more to Goldstein, who already has approval to subdivide it in a zone that permits replacing single-family homes with up to six housing units.

The lesson here, especially in times when money is tight and profits can have a special allure, is not to conduct real estate transactions over the table of a bagle shop. And don’t do it without a lawyer at your side.

One will probably end up there in any event.

Once again this year — this Sunday, in fact — Rockland Community College will host the American Heart Association’s Start! Heart Walk, an event that is expected to draw about 3,000 participants from Rockland, Bergen and Passiac counties.

The event begins with a program of speakers at 10:30 — including Rich Henning of Park Ridge N.J., who survived a heart attack at 43, and Audrey Liguanti of Spring Valley relating her 16-year-old son’s battle with cardiovascular disease.

The Walk itself kicks off at 11 a.m.

There will be a “Kids Zone,” with face painting, clowns and an inflatable “moon bounce.”

Blood pressure screenings and healthy cooking demonstrations will be among the highlights for adults.

You may drive along Route 59 every day for years and not see the scenes captured by the professional and serious amateur photographers taking part in the “59×59” exhibit now on view at the GAGA Arts Center in the Garnerville Arts and Industrial Complex.

The show opened last weekend as part of the two-day GAGA Arts Festival, but continues on Fridays from 4 to 8 p.m., Saturdays from 2 to 6 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. through June 6.

But this Saturday there’s a special opportunity. The public is invited to join the 31 participating photographers and their friends and family for a reception at GAGA from  6 to 10 p.m.

The first weekend reaction was overwhelming, says Ken Karlewicz, the professional photographer who was the mastermind behind the project last May 9. Karlewicz has several of his own shots in the exhibit, but more important to him are the works by his teen photography students from around the county.

One of those, an environmental portrait of the late Ellen Ferretti of Nanuet — whose home was all but encircled by the Nanuet Mall — captures decades of history in a single fram taken by 18-year-old Wilfry Fana of Haverstraw.

You can see Wilfry’s work and all the rest — and meet the artists themselves — tomorrow evening at GAGA. 

There’s no charge for the exhibit or the reception, although donations are accepted and all the photos are available for sale from the photographers.

Consider what’s happening to Haverstraw’s Hannah Sadak and then spin the clock forward about 20 years, to a day when millions of Baby Boomers are in their mid-80s to early 90s and can no longer hack it living on their own.

Sadak’s drama — and her family’s — may be played out thousands of time a day unless government and public policy awaken to the needs of an aging population.

Fortunately, I was able to keep my dad at home, living with my children and I, until the day he died at 88.

But suppose I didn’t own a home and have room. Suppose he had had to stay in his Bronx apartment. Suppose we didn’t have the money for around-the-clock care. He wanted no part of nursing homes, but there may have been no option.

Except, perhaps, for one Sadak’s family has employed— having a family member, in this case a 28-year-old grandson, spend nights at her apartment.

It might have been possible for one of my adult children to put off starting their career long enough to help take care of pop. It would have been a considerable sacrifice, but it’s what many people do for loved ones.

In our case, pop was with us and we all shared the load during the time when his part-time aide wasn’t on duty.

But suppose we did that at pop’s apartment, and suppose he lived in an all-senior environment, bound either by management choice or federal regulation, as the Sadak family seems to have been told.

It’s a scenario that deeply concerned Martin Bernstein, who in his last years worked to maximize use of the county’s adult home. His belief was that, as Boomers age, the need would only get greater for supportive, government-operated housing situations that, unlike private assisted living developments, doesn’t charge $3,000 to $4,000 or more a month.

In that respect, Bernstein, who made his living in real estate and devoted his spare time to watching over his beloved Clarkstown, was a visionary.

On its face, it seems the Sadak family — her daughter and grandson — were doing the right thing and going about it in the right way, alerting management to the problem and their proposed solution of having a family member stay with Sadak overnight while she recovers from a broken leg and strokes.

And it seem now that management at the Warren Knolls Apartments may be seeing the light.

But the time is going to come when handling this on a case by case basis isn’t going to work.

There may be millions of families facing the same issue — providing family-driven care in an elderly individual’s home when paid caregivers or high-priced facilities are out of their reach or don’t fit their needs.

As a society, we’re going to need to meet that need with facilities and with rules that flex enough to withstand the strain of old age, illness and limited income.

We owe that to a generation that will live longer than any before it.

A Facebook “cause” page, where individuals can sign up opposing parole for the two killers of Paula Bohovesky in 1980, has gathered close to 3,000 electronic signatures,  which will be submitted to parole authorities.

The page, and a PetitionForPaula.org Web site have been created by a coalition headed by County Legislator John Murphy, whose own children were classmates of Paula and her brother Peter when the 16-year-old honor student, artist and aspiring actress was grabbed off a Pearl River street, beaten, sexually assaulted and repeatedly stabbed before being left to die just blocks from home.

Two men, Robert McCain and Richard LaBarbera, were convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life. They have applied for parole twice since becoming eligible and have been rejected both times — in 2005 and again in 2007.

They come up again in the next few months and the Web site and Facebook page are designed to supplement paper petitions circulating in and near Pearl River.

The Facebook page, which can be accessed after joining the free social networking service, went on line Sunday and collected 2,847 names as of 3 p.m. yesterday.