It’s hard to believe, but it was just three months ago when 80-year-old Howard Beach veteran Richard Leporin’s house was ravaged by Hurricane Sandy and escalating flood waters and no electricity left him freezing and huddled under a blanket with his cat until his nephew came to visit and rescued them.

It’s taken a lot of hard work, but Leporin said things have gotten much better. He had to gut the water-logged first floor of his house, replacing the wooden beams and all the electrical wiring — something he said took about a day and a half with the help of his nephew and four friends.

“Are you from FEMA?” Terry Fogarty asked a visitor with a tinge of hope in her voice, which soon turned to disappointment when she realized federal help had not arrived.

On Friday afternoon, the Howard Beach resident had been waiting for over a week to get some kind of assistance after Hurricane Sandy damaged her home. It left her and her husband, two children and elderly mother without heat or electricity and a water-logged basement.

U.S. Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan) had little trouble fending off her three challengers in the Democratic primary on Tuesday, garnering slightly less than 58 percent of the vote in the race for the new 7th Congressional District, which includes Woodhaven and parts of Maspeth.

The 10-term congresswoman landed 57.5 percent of the vote, while Councilman Erik Martin Dilan (D-Brooklyn) received 31.8 percent, Manhattan economist Dan O’Connor garnered 8 percent, and Sunset Park district leader George Martinez won 2.6 percent of the ballots.

Candidates seen as the front runners in congressional primaries across Queens — whether incumbent lawmakers or party establishment choices — all won their nominations by wide margins Tuesday, according to preliminary results.

Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Wrong Man” was a film he enjoyed doing, experimenting with a narrative genre he had never attempted before. His narration in the prologue marks the only time he ever spoke in any of his movies. The film, starring Henry Fonda and Vera Miles, premiered in New York City on Dec. 22 1956.

Fonda played a nightclub musician and family man accused of an armed robbery he did not commit. We watch him being humiliated in minute detail by the process of justice that is supposed to protect him.

In all likelihood the ranks of the unemployed in Queens will increase by one on Monday when the Mets will announce that Manager Jerry Manuel’s contract will not be renewed. While Manuel’s fate is pretty much sealed, the status of General Manager Omar Minaya is not as clear-cut.

For Julio Ferreras, it was a night 37 years in the making.

Despite the Mets’ startling implosion at the end of last season, more than 50,000 devoted fans were out in full force on Tuesday for Shea Stadium’s final home opener.

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OK, they lost to St. Louis in the seventh game of the National League championship series in October, but for the rest of the season it was a sweet ride for Mets fans in 2006.

The Mets and Cardinals are mirror images in many ways. Neither team has great starting pitching and therefore both rely heavily on their bullpens for victories. Both teams had Septembers they would rather forget and both have star players who are now on the disabled list. The Mets will be without pitchers Pedro Martinez and Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez while outfielder Cliff Floyd is listed as doubtful, and the Cards will be without starting pitcher Mark Mulder and in all likelihood third baseman Scott Rolen.

You would allow that with a 12 game lead in the NL East that the Mets would have little to concern themselves with at the All Star break. If only that were the case.

Subway Flooding

Randy Johnson may be one of the most surly, unpleasant athletes to ever be around, but that does not condone the back page tabloid frenzy that was unleashed last week when it was discovered that he has a daughter out of wedlock with whom he supposedly does not maintain a relationship of any sort. While this is hardly laudable, it is sadly not an uncommon story, particularly in the world of professional sports, and it is certainly not a news story in a sophisticated market such as New York. Both the Daily News and the Post should have left this story for the reporters from the National Enquirer.

Mother Nature unequivocally foiled any notion that the winter of 2006 would be remembered as a mild one, besieging the Eastern seaboard over the weekend with 24 hours of relentless snowfall that broke records in the Big Apple and beyond.

While it was very cordial of Jets president Jay Cross to accept Queens Borough President Helen Marshall’s invitation to meet to discuss the idea of building a stadium for his football team in Queens, it won’t mean a thing unless Mayor Bloomberg throws his support behind Marshall’s initiative.

Cole Brothers has tigers. The Mets would have a man who said this offseason that he loves baseball so much that he would pitch, for free, “in a goat’s den.”

President George W. Bush was reelected Tuesday, garnering 51.1 percent of the nearly 114 million votes cast to Senator John Kerry’s 48 percent. He clinched the race when Kerry conceded the battleground state of Ohio at 11 a.m. Wednesday.

Queens Borough President Helen Marshall recently welcomed 56 new members of the borough’s 14 community boards to a training session where they were told about decisions they will face related to land use, planning, development and the constraints of the city’s $47-billion budget.

In a city where all the other teams are painfully below average, the Yankees news never stops.

The baseball playoffs are here, and the Yankees are picking up right where they left off.

The Yankees’ 2-1 win over the Boston Red Sox this past Monday will be remembered as a turning point game if the Bronx Bombers go on to win yet another American League East title. Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez and Yankees hurler Mike Mussina were engaged in a brilliant pitching duel in which neither was involved in the final decision. This was the kind of game I used to see all the time growing up in the late ’60s and early ’70s but it has become a rarity these days.