Each person honored at Thursday’s Snohomish County Red Cross breakfast was asked to define the word hero. While none of the heroes actually thought themselves worthy of the title, many defined it as someone who sees a need and responds to it, or something similar to that.
Gary Herald, the Everett man who won the adult Good Samaritan award, said a hero is someone who does something risky despite the consequences. That’s what Herald did when he used his vehicle to stop another car being "driven" by a woman who was slumped over the wheel from a heart attack.
But it was something else Herald said that summed up the good deeds and the people being honored for them — and we’re not just saying that because of his name.
"It’s my job. It’s everybody’s job to take care of everybody else," Herald said in a prepared video presentation. "A lot of people don’t do their jobs."
Argue and bicker all you want over the definition of a hero and who qualifies and who doesn’t. Perhaps the word should be defined by the person who benefits from the act. Certainly someone stranded along a road with no gas would think a passerby a hero for stopping to help before danger — in its many forms — struck. A hurting family who finds a couple bags of groceries on the front stoop thinks their unknown benefactors are heroes. A child pulled from a burning home thinks her rescuer is a hero.
But every single hero could simply shrug it off as just "doing their job." And they would be right, too. Because, like Herald said, it’s everybody’s job to help everybody else. And there’s always a consequence for helping someone else. A little less money for yourself and your family. Precious time lost when you step outside your busy schedule. The possibility of personal injury, even death.
Yes, it feels good to help someone struggling. And there’s a grateful relief to be on the receiving end of that good and heroic deed. But in the larger picture, society depends upon these heroic acts every day just in order to survive. It’s worth celebrating — at least once a year — just a small portion of those people who "do their jobs."
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