A Kent man who died two years ago on the Fourth of July as he rescued a boy in the Columbia River in Oregon was named Thursday as a recipient of a Carnegie Medal for his life-saving effort.
Daniel L. Diaz was one of 20 individuals nationwide who received the hero honor from the Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Hero Fund Commission. The honorees, or their surviving families, each receive a bronze medal and $5,000, according to the Associated Press.
Diaz, 33, a mechanic, died helping to save a 12-year-old boy from drowning near Rowena, Ore., according to the Carnegie commission. The boy was attempting to swim across a 300-foot-wide inlet along the Columbia River at a state park when he became fatigued and called out for help at a point about halfway across.
On a dock that extended into an inlet near the boy, Diaz entered the water from the dock and swam about 125 feet out to the boy. Diaz spoke to the boy, and he and the boy started to swim to the dock.
After they had swum about 100 feet, Diaz experienced difficulty and called for help. Others at the scene responded to aid him, but he submerged. The boy swam to the dock on his own and exited the water to safety. Rescue divers found Diaz about two hours later. He had drowned.
The Carnegie commission website explained how Andrew Carnegie started the awards for heroes in 1904:
“We live in a heroic age, Andrew Carnegie wrote in the opening lines of the Commission’s founding Deed of Trust in 1904. Not seldom are we thrilled by deeds of heroism where men or women are injured or lose their lives in attempting to preserve or rescue their fellows.
Carnegie’s “hero fund,” is administered by a 21-member commission in Pittsburgh, was charged with honoring whom he called the “heroes of civilization,” whose lifesaving actions put them in stark contrast to the “heroes of barbarism, (who) maimed or killed” their fellow man. That the mission of the Hero Fund as set forth by Carnegie is unchanged over more than a century, despite massive upheaval in the social and world order, is testament both to his foresight and to essentially unchanging human nature.
The commission’s working definition of a hero as well as its requirements for awarding remain largely those that were approved by the founder. The candidate for an award must be a civilian who voluntarily risks his or her life to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the life of another person.
The rescuer must have no full measure of responsibility for the safety of the victim. There must be conclusive evidence to support the act’s occurrence, and the act must be called to the attention of the commission within two years.”
For more information, go to www.carnegiehero.org.
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