In its second announcement of 2021, the Carnegie Hero Fund is proud to recognize 18 civilians who risked their lives for others. Each will receive the Carnegie Medal, North America’s highest honor for civilian heroism.
A Kailua-Kona man, Marc F. Romano, was among those to be awarded this quarter for saving a lady at A-Bay after she was bit by a shark:
On a boat nearby, 26-year-old deckhand Marc F. Romano, of Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, immediately jumped into the Pacific Ocean after hearing a swimmer screaming for help off the coast of Waikoloa, Hawaii, on Jan. 2. As Romano, swimming with a foam floaty, approached the woman, 68-year-old Jeri L. Douglas, he noticed a cloud of blood surrounding her. She shouted that she had been bitten by a shark. Romano instructed the woman to hold to one end of the floaty and towed her to a responding boat. At the beach, Romano and others carried the woman to arriving paramedics, who applied a tourniquet to stanch the bleeding from her leg. Douglas suffered bite wounds to her calf, a broken leg bone, and wounds to her ankle and toe, and continues to recover.
The Carnegie Medal is given throughout the U.S. and Canada to those who enter extreme danger while saving or attempting to save the lives of others. With this announcement, a total of 10,238 Carnegie Medals have been awarded since the Pittsburgh-based Fund’s inception in 1904. Commission Chair Mark Laskow said each of the awardees or their survivors will also receive a financial grant. Throughout the 117 years since the Fund was established by industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, nearly $43 million has been given in one-time grants, scholarship aid, death benefits, and continuing assistance.