ACCIDENTAL LIFE SAVER: Steven Jacobs holds the ChapStick lip balm that saved his life — when he bent to pick it up and ducked a bullet that whizzed by.
A dropped ChapStick saved the life of a medical worker yesterday — when he bent over to retrieve the fumbled lip balm and ducked a bullet that ripped through his office window.
"It was my lucky ChapStick," physician's assistant Steven Jacobs joked last night as he recounted his brush with death.
According to cops and witnesses, Jacobs, 35, was working at the Ditmas Park Rehab/Care Center on Ditmas Ave. just before 3 p.m. when a gunfight erupted outside on East 21st Street.
Cops said an argument between two men escalated to the point where one pulled a BB gun and pointed it at his antagonist — who responded by pulling a real handgun and firing several times.
One shot hit the BB guy in the jaw.
The other ricocheted and went through a plate-glass window in Jacobs' office.
Jacobs, a former Israeli cop, had just bent over to pick up the fallen ChapStick when he heard the glass shattering.
"It was a little scary at first; I thought there was car backfiring in the parking lot," he said.
"The second shot told me I needed to stay down."
One shard cut him near the eye, but he pointed out his injuries could have easily been much worse.
"Thank God I'm walking around," he said.
"I haven't started thinking about it yet. There's a hole in the window over there and seconds before I was standing up there. It's ridiculous."
Leo Oberlander, executive director of the center, said of Jacobs, "He was more shocked and surprised than anything.
"At first he yelled, 'I'm shot! I'm shot!'
"I've been here 10 years and I've never seen anything like this before."
Jacobs was not seriously injured, and was treated by a doctor at the center and later taken to a hospital, where he was further treated and released.
Jacobs said he believes the bullet would have hit him in the chest if he had not bent over. He says his survival was a miracle.
"I was very fortunate," he said. "God was with me, no question. If God wanted me dead, I would be dead."
The man shot in the face was hospitalized at Kings County Hospital in serious condition as doctors worked to remove the slug from his jaw, a police sources said.
Detectives said they do not know what prompted the shooting.
No arrests had been made as of last night, although police recovered the BB gun at the scen
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