16 Heroes Honored For Risking Their Lives To Save Others

A railroad supervisor who clobbered an attacking cougar with a wrench, a hospital worker who stopped a mugging and 15 others were honored Thursday for acts of heroism.

The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission awarded $2,500 each and gold medals to people from the United States and Canada who risked their lives to save others. Awards also went to survivors of three people who died during heroic acts.

Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie started the fund in 1904, inspired by tales of heroism in a coal-mining disaster.

Heroes included Dwight Sadek, 39, who answered a cry for help in Creston, British Columbia, on May 25, 1995. He found a 55-pound cougar with its mouth latched onto railway mechanic Narinder Mondair’s right hand.

Neither kicks nor rocks dislodged the big cat, so Sadek knocked it out with a wrench. Mondair needed extensive repairs to his right hand and spent two weeks in the hospital.

The cougar was unusually thin and may have attacked because it was starving. It was shot after the attack.

Others honored Thursday were:

Robert Wagner, 41, of St. Clair Shores, Mich., who intervened in a co-worker’s mugging in a Detroit parking garage in 1994.

Scott Miller, 29, of Pleasanton, Calif., who pulled an unconscious woman out of a burning house in 1996 in San Carlos, Calif.

Daniel Kuehl, 44, of St. James, Minn., who pulled a woman out of a car that sank in a flooded field last year in Montevideo, Minn.

Michael Douty, 18, of Taylors, S.C., who drowned in 1995 as he tried to save a teenager from a flooded culvert in Greer, S.C. The teenager eventually pulled herself out of the water.

Alan Laidlaw, 18, of Greenville, S.C., who tried to save Douty but was swept downstream to safety.

Brentwood Parker, 34, of Whiteville, N.C., who pulled a woman out of a burning car in Whiteville in 1996.

Jerry Caines, 38, of Riegelwood, N.C., who helped Parker save the woman from the car.

Guillermo Rangel, 36, of Seguin, Texas, who saved a woman and three children from a burning mobile home last year in McQueeney, Texas.

Deborah Rae O’Shields, 33, of New Castle, Del., who made a cannonball dive through ice in a swimming pool and saved a 7-year-old boy in 1995.

James Cain, 34, of Richmond, Ky., who pulled an infant out of a crib and ran out of a burning house last year in Richmond.