Lost in city's jungle

New immigrant Damon Mootoo had been in New York for less than a day when he faced one of the city's toughest challenges: navigating the confusing streets of Queens.

Mootoo spent five long, cold days wandering Jamaica after he got lost during a walk and was too intimidated to ask strangers how to get home. Mootoo, 32, was rescued yesterday by a kindhearted churchgoer who spotted him shivering on a Queens street and gave him food and water.

"I want to go home," Mootoo said last night after his stressful misadventure. "I'm thinking about going back to Guyana."

Mootoo got lost Wednesday, less than 12 hours after arriving in New York for the first time, when he left his brother's South Jamaica house to stretch his legs.

He was being treated last night at Jamaica Hospital for the dehydration and frostbite he suffered in the frigid air.

"When we saw him, he was just crying," said Mootoo's brother Mark Miller, 43. "He said, 'I'm glad to see you.' "

When Mootoo left Miller's two-story house on 152nd St. Wednesday morning, he wasn't wearing gloves or carrying an ID.

Miller said Mootoo had recently received his permanent resident card and was excited about starting a new life in America.

"He said he was trying to find his way back," Miller said. "He said he was just walking all over. He was scared. He heard all the stories about New York."

Mootoo, who is hard of hearing but can communicate in English, told relatives he didn't want to approach a cop because he feared he'd be deported.

He survived by begging several homeowners for water, but he was too ashamed and shy to ask for food or directions back to 152nd St., Miller said. At night, when temperatures plunged into the low 20s, Mootoo slept in an abandoned car or sought shelter from the snow under a piece of wood in a stranger's yard, he told relatives.

Meanwhile, his panicked kin posted flyers with Mootoo's picture across South Jamaica and formed search parties.

"We were thinking the worst after so many days," Miller said.

But just when hope was fading, Michael Bharath, 37, was walking home from church and saw Mootoo near his house on 142nd Place at Rockaway Blvd. "He looked in desperation," Bharath said.

Bharath's wife, Cynthia, made Mootoo a sandwich. Feeling secure, Mootoo told them his situation.

Michael Bharath asked if he had anything with his relatives' address written on it. Mootoo dug in his pockets and found a piece of paper with his stepmother's Foch Blvd. address. Bharath drove him there and reunited Mootoo with his worried family.

"When I see people in need, I try to help them," Bharath said. "He was in need, and I'm pretty sure that within a couple more hours he would have been a dead man."