Boy Scout wins hero award
Published: July 4, 2007
Eric Pawlowski hesitated only briefly when a friend and the friend’s toddler son were being swept away by the Maumee River on a warm spring night last year.
Then the life-saving training he had received as a Boy Scout took hold.
He jumped into the swift-running river and pulled Derek J. and “D.J.” Bettinger back to a pier at the Rossford Marina, where the two men and another friend had been “midnight fishing” before 2-year-old “D.J.” lost his balance while throwing stones and fell into the water.
Several others fishing nearby that night helped haul everyone back up onto the pier.
Mr. Pawlowski’s rescue of the Bettingers from probable drowning on the night of April 13, 2006, was recognized last night at the Safety Council of Northwest Ohio’s 40th annual Hero Awards Banquet in Maumee, where Mr. Pawlowski was one of 11 people to receive the agency’s Award of Heroism.
Thirteen other people received Good Samaritan Awards from the safety council, and 11 will receive Certificates of Appreciation.
Mr. Pawlowski received his Eagle Scout rank at a Boy Scouts ceremony in Rossford a little more than six months before fate tapped his shoulder. He said he initially hesitated only because he doubted his ability to perform the rescue, but quickly decided he had no choice but to try.
“I pretty much learned all this. I just hadn’t done it before,” Mr. Pawlowski, who turns 20 next month, said.
Both the father and the son, he said, suffered hypothermia and inhaled enough river water to be close to drowning, but after hospital care escaped with no permanent injuries.
The safety council’s 10 other Hero Award honorees for 2006 include three other civilians who happened to be on the scene when others needed help and seven law-enforcement officers involved in separate incidents in Northwood and Findlay during which they took heroic action beyond their normal calls of duty, said Dennis McMickens, the safety council’s president and chief executive.
Five of the law-enforcement officers to be honored were involved in a 40-mile freeway chase on March 26, 2006, that ended with a shoot-out in Bluffton, Ohio. The incident involved a Detroit man who had fired a shot into the floor at an Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles office in Bowling Green after police responded to a call from staff suspicious of the Georgia birth certificate the man presented to get an Ohio identification card.
Ohio Highway Patrol Troopers Albert Leitenberger and Chuck Grizzard, both of whom were shot by Donti Jamal Henry outside a convenience store on State Rt. 103 near I-75, will receive the Award of Heroism, as will Trooper Brian Snyder-Hernandez, Wood County sheriff’s Deputy Greg Panning, and Matt Keilman, a Bowling Green police officer.
Two shots fired by Deputy Panning killed Henry, who fired at police with two pistols and was reported to be wearing body armor.
Bluffton police Officer Charles “Ed” Montgomery, who transported one of the wounded troopers to a hospital, and highway patrol dispatchers Cheryl Babione and Denise Duerk will receive certificates of appreciation from the safety council for their roles.
The other two officers to receive the Award of Heroism from the safety council are Sgt. Kevin Repeta and Officer David Buck, of the Northwood Police Department, who, on Jan. 4, 2006, witnessed a traffic collision at Wales and Oram roads and immediately observed that one of the vehicles had caught fire.
They pulled that car’s two injured occupants to safety despite smoke and flames; Sergeant Repeta then successfully fought the fire with an extinguisher from his cruiser.
The other civilian Award of Heroism nominees are:
•Darrien Rivera, 10, who on Feb. 26, 2006 twice tackled a vicious dog that entered her home and attacked a friend, Nicole Brown. Wounded herself by the dog, Miss Rivera was able to pry its jaws from Miss Brown’s leg and then defend her friend long enough for others to summon help.
•Paul Walker, who on June 17 rescued a tenant during a fire at the Perry’s Crossing apartment complex in Perrysburg. Mr. Walker, a maintenance technician at the complex, knew tenant Becky Printki to be disabled and likely to need assistance getting into her wheelchair.
He retrieved prosthetic leg braces Ms. Printki needs and alerted other tenants about the fire before it consumed the building.
•Nate Thompson, a resident of the Valley Stream Village Apartments in Springfield Township who, during a fire there on Dec. 4, caught the 14-month-old son of tenant Jonathon Thorpe as smoke began to spread through Mr. Thorpe’s apartment. Mr. Thorpe dropped the toddler into Mr. Thompson’s waiting arms, then jumped himself. Mr. Thompson also helped alert other tenants to the fire.
“They didn’t think, they just did it,” Mr. McMickens said of the Award of Heroism honorees. “These are good citizens, good neighbors. You want to recognize the good things people are doing for their fellow person.”
Good Samaritan Awards for 2006 will be given to:
•Wayne Swisher, a letter carrier who coaxed two small children out of a burning house along his route on Jan. 4.
•John Fahy, Scott Ketring, and Shane Shulters, who on April 24 performed life-saving cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Mike Naumann when Mr. Naumann collapsed at their workplace, GB Manufacturing in Napoleon.
•John Bodie, David Gottron, and Matthew Gottron, who on May 25 helped in the rescue of a man who fell overboard from a fishing boat in Port Clinton.
•Robert Kendrick, an off-duty Toledo firefighter-paramedic who assisted three people injured when they jumped from a burning apartment building on Aug. 12.
•Chris Sifuentes and Dr. Gary Gladieux, who used CPR to revive Al Saleh, a Maumee High School janitor who collapsed Sept. 11 during an event at the school.
•Jovan Stokes, a nursing student who provided aid to a 9-year-old boy who rode his bicycle into the path of a vehicle on Hill Avenue on Sept. 26.
•Pete Sepeda, a Toledo police officer who on Sept. 27 prevented a distraught man from jumping off the Martin Luther King, Jr. Bridge.
•Shelby Barney, 10, who on Nov. 13 performed the Heimlich maneuver on her brother, Marcus Barney, when he choked on a jawbreaker he had mistaken for a gumball.
Other certificates of Appreciation for 2006 were given to:
•Ryan Launder and Alex Hennessy, Rossford firefighters who participated in a Jan. 24 water rescue in the Maumee near the Rossford Marina.
•Robert York, a Maumee police officer who rescued a potential suicide victim near U.S. 23/I-475 and Manley Road on Feb. 16.
•Toledo firefighter Mark Wietrzykowski and police Lt. Timothy Clapp, who on Aug. 4 rescued a potential suicide victim at his home
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