PITTSBURGH—A father and son from Indiana who died trying to rescue a boy who fell into a rain-swollen drainage ditch are among 20 people being awarded Carnegie medals for heroism.
Forty-eight-year-old Mark Thanos, and his father, 74-year-old John Thanos, drowned in their hometown of Chesterton, Ind. on Sept. 14, 2008, though the boy survived.
Among the other recipients: 30-year-old Jorge L. Orozco of Firestone, Colo., who saved 1- and 4-year-old siblings from burning after his tractor-trailer collided head-on with their mother’s sport-utility vehicle on Oct. 28, in Lucerne, Colo.
Twenty-nine-year-old Allen Drew Nelson of Brooklyn, N.Y., will also be honored. He saved a 36-year-old woman from drowning when she lost consciousness and was separated from her inner tube on the Colorado River in Dotsero, Colo., on July 14, 2008.
Pittsburgh steel baron Andrew Carnegie started the Carnegie Hero Fund in 1904 after hearing rescue stories from a mine disaster that killed 181 people. Since then, $31.8 million has been awarded to 9,304 people.
Medalists, or their heirs, receive $6,000.
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