The California Marine veteran who saved a woman's life after she jumped from the upper deck of the Oakland Coliseum after a Raiders game last November has been named a Carnegie Hero.
The Associated Press reports Donnie Navidad, 61, of Stockton is one of 21 men and women this year to receive the Carnegie Medal.
According to the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission website:
The medal is given throughout the United States and Canada to those who risk their lives to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the lives of others.
As Home Post reported last year, Navidad broke the 50-foot fall of a distraught woman who plunged from the stadium's upper deck shortly after a Raiders game ended.
Navidad told Sacramento television station 10News last year how he helped break the fall of the 20-year-old woman:
"I had a fix on her and then she started to descend. As she started to descend I braced myself to catch her."
Alameda County Sheriff's Sgt. J.D. Nelson made it clear to the Oakland Tribune that the 100 pound jumper would've certainly died if it hadn't been for Navidad:
"He (Navidad) saved her life quite honestly, at his own expense. This guy 100 percent saved her life. She'd be dead now."
The Stockton resident, interviewed last November by The Associated Press, didn't see his good did as heroic:
"They want to label me a hero, but how do you define a hero? I would've done it for anybody."
