FARMINGTON, N.Y. (AP) - A Thruway worker is being praised for his quick action in preventing a two-year-old girl from wandering onto one of the highway's Rochester-area exit ramps.

Hank Linek was on break yesterday afternoon inside a building at the Exit 44 interchange in Farmington, Ontario County, when a co-worker in one of the toll booths called him and said a child had wandered near the road.

Linek ran out and found the toddler in her pajamas only about 60 feet from the exit's 20-mile-an-hour E-Z-Pass lane.

Linek held onto the girl until police arrived.

The toddler had wandered out of her mother's nearby trailer home while the mother's boyfriend was asleep. Ontario County sheriff's deputies have charged 29-year-old Sherwood Gayhart Junior with endangering the welfare of a child.

Deputies say Gayhart told them that the girl got out of the trailer through a broken door.

The girl's mother wasn't home at the time of the incident.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)