They Ran Toward Danger: Meet the 16 Newest Carnegie Medal Heroes

Erik Opal was home sick with the flu two days before Christmas when he heard his father screaming outside. He called 911 and ran out the door. What he found was a man stabbing his dad, Chad, in the head, the mouth and near his heart. Erik, 16 years old, did the only thing that came to him. He tackled the attacker and held him down for 10 minutes until deputies arrived.

“I just blacked out,” Erik told WOWT in Omaha. “Fight or flight. I don’t even remember what really went through my brain.” His father survived. Nine months later, Chad Opal put it more simply: “I gave birth to my hero, as my savior.”

Erik is one of 16 people from across the United States and Canada who just received the Carnegie Medal, the highest civilian award for heroism in North America. The list, released September 21 by the Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, reads like a reminder of something we forget too easily: most heroes are not wearing a uniform. They are delivery drivers, electricians, chemists, custodians and teenagers who happened to be there.

What the Carnegie Medal Is

Steel magnate Andrew Carnegie created the Hero Fund in 1904 to recognize civilians who risk their lives, to an extraordinary degree, to save someone else. Since then, the medal has been awarded to 10,597 people, and over 122 years the fund has given more than $47 million in grants, scholarships, death benefits and ongoing assistance to recipients and their families.

The standards are strict. Professional rescuers acting in the line of duty generally do not qualify. The rescuer must have known the risk and chosen to face it anyway. That is why so many honorees are ordinary bystanders, and why so many of the awards are given after the rescuer has died.

This September’s class is the fund’s third announcement of 2026. Of the 16 honorees, five did not survive.

The Teenager, the Driver and the Knife Attacks

Erik Opal was not the only honoree who faced a blade.

On August 11, 2025, Amanda Williams, a 37-year-old single mother who drives for DoorDash, was passing through Vallejo, California, when she saw a man attacking another man with two steak knives. The victim, Roscell Wallace, was shouting for help.

“He was yelling, ‘Help me! He’s trying to kill me!’ He just kept saying that over and over,” Williams told NBC Bay Area. She stopped her car, grabbed the attacker’s wrist so he could not keep swinging, and used her other hand to twist the knives away. She walked away with minor cuts on her hands. The attacker stole her car and totaled it before police arrested him; NBC Bay Area reports he faces attempted murder and other charges.

“I didn’t really think about it,” Williams said. “It was either I had to do something or he was going to die. It was a split second.” Wallace’s view of her is simpler: “She’s like an angel. God sent her to save me.”

Back in Council Bluffs, Iowa, the man who stabbed Chad Opal later took a plea deal and was sentenced to 15 years in prison, according to WOWT. The deal spared Erik’s 10-year-old sister from having to testify. Erik still seems a little stunned by the honor. “One of the highest honors a civilian could have,” he said. “I see myself as somebody who saved a life.”

The Electrician on the Mountain

On February 6, 2026, Stephen Parson, a 75-year-old hang glider pilot, crashed on Mount Prevost in British Columbia’s Cowichan Valley. He was left hanging in his harness above a steep gully with multiple fractures, a gashed leg and a concussion. Suspension in a harness can cut off circulation, which makes every minute dangerous.

Matthew Clark, a 24-year-old electrician from Victoria, heard what happened and went up. He had no climbing gear. According to the Carnegie Hero Fund’s account, reported by Victoria News, Clark free-climbed a narrow, 27-foot rock chimney “placing his back against a slippery, mossy side and his feet against the other for optimum traction.” He reached Parson, cut him out of the harness with a knife, dragged him to level ground and gave first aid until a North Shore Rescue helicopter arrived.

Parson spent eight days in the hospital and fully recovered. Cowichan Search and Rescue credited Clark with stabilizing him. Clark’s own explanation was modest: he said he felt “comfortable and in my element and I went for it.”

Live Wires, Rip Currents and Barges

On August 31, 2025, Larry Pickett Sr., a 46-year-old business owner from Raleigh, North Carolina, came upon an SUV that had struck a utility pole outside Fort Montgomery, New York. Power lines carrying more than 12,000 volts were down on the vehicle, and electricity was arcing. The driver was semiconscious. Pickett unbuckled him and pulled him out moments before flames engulfed the SUV. His son, Larry Pickett Jr., helped with the rescue and earlier this year received the U.S. Army’s Soldier’s Medal, according to Hoodline.

Water rescues make up a large share of every Carnegie class, and this one is no different:

• Eslam Saad, a 32-year-old chemist from Dublin, Ohio, swam about 120 feet off Fort Lauderdale on June 15, 2025, to reach a 10-year-old girl caught in a rip current. She panicked and grabbed his neck, pulling him under, but he got her to shallow water before collapsing on the beach. The girl survived. Her father did not.
• Mason Laney and Logan Green, both 19 and from Minooka, Illinois, used a personal watercraft on the Illinois River on September 14, 2025, to pull a 15-year-old out of the path of oncoming barges. The barges struck the boy’s overturned watercraft about 20 feet from where they grabbed him.
• Brandon D. Walcott, 38, of Marmora, New Jersey, swam into a rip current off Ocean City in July 2024, dove for a girl who had gone under and helped revive her.
• Evan R. Scheck, 28, of Spencer, Iowa, waded and swam through a flooded river in May 2024 to reach a 12-year-old clinging to a utility pole.
• Luke Nelson, 35, of Dallas, reached a 71-year-old stranded in an SUV on a submerged guardrail in a flooded river in September 2024 and kept him steady until firefighters arrived.

And Michael D. Shoemaker Jr., 41, of Vancouver, Washington, walked into a smoke-filled apartment in November 2023 and dragged a 63-year-old man to safety.

The Five Who Did Not Come Home

The hardest part of any Carnegie announcement is the list of names marked as deceased. This year there are five.

Jose Villalta, a 68-year-old custodian in Stockton, California, went back into his burning home on December 27, 2025, to find his 13-year-old grandson. The boy got out with minor burns. Villalta was found near the front door.

Mason E. Marshall, 27, of Lancaster, Ohio, was inside a burning duplex on April 1, 2026. He passed his daughter through a window to people outside, then turned back for his fiancée and son. All three died of carbon monoxide poisoning. His daughter lived.

Brent A. Delaney, 60, of Alton, Nova Scotia, entered a fully engulfed house in June 2025 to try to reach his 82-year-old neighbor. Both died.

Glen R. Sprowl Jr., 53, of Stanton, California, confronted a gunman at a bar in Trabuco Canyon in August 2023 armed with only a pocketknife. He was shot four times and died at the scene.

Jakaiden Rynearson, 19, of Peoria, Illinois, went to help a shooting victim in August 2024 and was shot repeatedly by the gunman. He died two and a half months later.

Their families will receive the medal and financial support from the fund. No medal fills that kind of hole, but it does something important. It puts their choice on the permanent record.

Why These Stories Matter Right Now

We spend a lot of time on this site covering hard news: wars, interest rates, crime and courtroom fights. Stories like these are not a break from reality. They are reality too. For every headline about what is broken, there is a delivery driver in Vallejo or a teenager in Council Bluffs who proves the basic decency of ordinary people is still there.

It is the same thread that runs through stories we have told before, like the father who saved his daughter from a rogue wave in California and Boston Marathon survivor Marc Fucarile’s work to help others who lose their mobility. Courage is not a personality type. It is a decision made in a few seconds, usually by someone who never expected to be tested.

Notice what nearly every honoree says afterward. Williams: “I didn’t really think about it.” Erik Opal: “I don’t even remember what really went through my brain.” Clark: “I went for it.” These are not people who calculated the odds. They saw someone who needed help and decided that mattered more than their own safety.

How to Nominate a Hero

The Carnegie Hero Fund accepts nominations from anyone. Cases are investigated by the fund’s staff, who interview witnesses and review police and medical records before the commission votes. Acts generally must be brought to the fund’s attention within two years. If you know someone who risked their life to save another person, the fund’s website explains how to submit a case.

It is worth doing. Too many acts of real courage end up as a paragraph in a local paper and then disappear.