Nineteen honored as Carnegie Heroes

Tuesday, July 2, 2002 | 1:21 a.m.

The 19 people who received awards Tuesday from the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission:

-Roger Alan Scalf, 38, a firefighter from Texas City, Texas, braved frigid waters and a strong current in the Gulf of Mexico to rescue a man who had lost consciousness. He swam 150 feet back to shore with the man in tow on Feb. 23, 2001.

-Steven Brunelle, 39, San Diego, left his car and freed a much larger man from a vehicle that had overturned and caught fire on Feb. 19, 2000.

- Mark Allen Narantic, 41, a park foreman from Hammond, Ind., rescued a 42-year-old man from drowning in Wolf Lake on July 15, 2000, although the panicked man tried to climb on top of Narantic during the rescue.

-Barbara Ann D'Hondt, 42, of Novi, Mich., rescued a 4-year-old neighbor after the family's mobile home caught fire on Oct. 2, 2001.

-Christine DeCourt, 51, of Alexandria, Va., saw a man repeatedly stabbing an 8-year-old boy in the front yard of a nearby home. The office manager was stabbed in the abdomen trying to stop the attack. The boy died of his wounds.

-Bojan Savric, 32, of Delta, British Columbia, was injured pulling a woman from her burning car after a multi-vehicle collision in British Columbia on Aug. 2, 2000. The car exploded less than a minute later, killing two other occupants.

-Sui Sang Lo, 48, of Vancouver, British Columbia, helped Savric pull Kathrine Foster, 26, from the burning vehicle. He suffered burns to his face and right arm.

-Aric Ren Jeffs, 26, of Sherwood, Ore., hung from the front of a moving freight train passing over a bridge in Oregon to snatch a 7-year-old boy who was clinging to a rail. The conductor was promoted to engineer three months after the incident on Aug. 9, 2001.

-Joseph M. Stepanek, 20, of Manchester, Iowa, pulled a 12-year-old boy, and his 13-year-old sister from a burning vehicle in Marion, Iowa on Oct. 27, 2001. Stepanek returned to the vehicle three times and used a knife to free the girl from her seat belt.

-Brandon J. Trapp, 20, of Manchester, Iowa, was with Stepanek and saved the children's mother as flames broke through a firewall and into the driver's compartment.

- F. Mitchell Smith, 71, of Stittsville, Ontario, fought with a man who was slashing a woman with two knives outside his home. He suffered slash and puncture wounds to the chest and back. Smith and the woman survived the attack, which happened on Oct. 4, 2000.

-Russell Hileman, 37, of Camden, Ohio, died while trying to save the daughters of a friend during a fishing trip on June 6, 2001. Hileman swam to the 10- and 11-year-old girls, who were carried into the lake from the mouth of a stream, but all three perished. The girls' father also drowned.

-John P. Kasper III, 43, of Humarock, Mass., found a kayak in the dark after hearing two men shouting for help and paddled a quarter mile into Massachusetts Bay to save a man from drowning. The man's brother, who was also in a boat that capsized on April 30, 2001, was not found.

-H. Wayne Hix, Jr., 53, of Galveston, Texas, drowned after saving an 11-year-old girl who was pulled into the Gulf of Mexico by strong currents on June 30, 2001. Hix lost consciousness after handing the girl to other men.

-Carl M. Harrison, Jr., 44, a state police trooper from Rochester, Pa., pulled a woman from a burning vehicle on Oct. 24, 2001. Harrison entered the vehicle three times before freeing the woman.

-Rebecca Welch, 22, a forest service firefighter from Lancaster, Calif., shared her one-person fire shelter with two campers as a forest fire overtook them. Four fellow firefighters were killed in their shelters in Washington's Chewuch River canyon on July 10, 2001. Welch suffered second-degree burns, but she and the campers survived.

-Gary George Ferrier, 32, of Durham, Ontario, died trying to save a worker who was overcome by gas in an empty, 4,000-gallon liquid manure tank. He and two other men died during the incident on Aug 15, 2000 in Drayton, Ontario.

-Erich Schulz, 32, of Ayton, Ontario, tied a rope around Ferrier, his foreman, before he was overcome with fumes and died.

-Joseph A. McGuire, 44, of Schenectady, N.Y., saved two people from a burning car on May 4, 2001, after the vehicle crashed into a garage. McGuire had to climb on top of the burning car to free a passenger as the garage filled with smoke and later burned to the ground.