Regional Valor Awards presented
Richmond Chief Bryan Norwood and Gold Award winners Todd Jones, C, and Ruddy Zhao. 19th Annual Valor Awards Breakfast at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.
They rescued people from burning buildings, wrecked cars and collapsed homes, or kept others from hurting or killing themselves.
And in doing so, they often put their own lives on the line.
Yesterday, their selfless acts of heroism were rewarded.
Eleven police officers, firefighters and sheriff's deputies from across the region were honored at the 19th annual Valor Awards breakfast at the Greater Richmond Convention Center.
Two of the 11 received Gold Awards, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a local emergency responder. The others collected Bronze Awards for heroic deeds.
Also, three local residents received Citizens Valor Awards for saving lives.
First Market Bank and Ukrop's Super Markets were the presenting sponsors of yesterday's event, whose keynote speaker was retired Navy Cmdr. Paul Galanti, who was held captive nearly seven years in North Vietnam's infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison complex.
"They're all heroes," Galanti said of the emergency responders, who have a kinship with uniformed military personnel.
"I've been involved with the Richmond Police Department almost since I came home," Galanti noted. "And they go through the same kind of stuff that we did in combat, except most of those guys don't know who the enemy is. There are a lot of similarities in what we do."
And like the members of the military, Galanti said, police officers and firefighters "are typically underappreciated."
The girl became depressed and left the Educational Development Center, a private school in Highland Park, after passing a note to a friend saying she wanted to hurt herself. Jones and Zhao were alerted and began a search.
The officers tried approaching the girl after spotting her near some railroad tracks, but she ran onto the tracks toward an oncoming train. After several failed attempts to get her off the tracks, the officers immobilized the girl with pepper spray and got her, and themselves, off the tracks just as the train passed.
While on his paper delivery route for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Williams, a retired New York City police officer and Navy-trained firefighter, discovered a Chesterfield house on fire and alerted the occupants by banging on their front door. With no protective clothing, he entered the burning home and rescued a 2-year-old girl from her smoke-filled bedroom on March 25.
Gordon and Martin rescued a woman who had re-entered her burning Henrico home to save her pet dogs on Jan. 7. After the woman was overcome by smoke and collapsed inside the front door, the men grabbed the rug she had fallen on, pulled her outside and extinguished the flames on her clothes. She died several days later.
Contact Mark Bowes at (804) 649-6450 or
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Staff writer Zach Reid contributed to this report.
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