Within days, the BBPD, named the Good Samaritans as Jannette Rivera, Juan Chavez, Jr., Michael Edelstein, David Formica, DaVida Peele, Marko Bartolone and Muriel Vaughns.
They even hosted a live event that was broadcast on Facebook. Watch the reception honoring the good Samaritans here:
The BBPD didn’t only verbally honor the heroes, they also awarded them each with a six to eight night Caribbean cruise and a $2,000 gift card, as well as other donations offered by the community.
At this special event for the heroes, shown in the video where the Good Samaritans stop a car, each hero was given a chance to speak.
Rivera went first saying that she saw Rabyor’s car began moving onto the sidewalk at first, which is what first alerted her, partially only because she new her coworker didn’t normally go the direction the car was starting to head. That’s when another coworker said to Jannette that Raynor seemed like she was having a seizure. So Rivera put her care in park and started running.
“I didn’t think about my life, you know, I just saw her going [toward] the other car, and the other car was going to hit her,” Rivera explained of the situation. “I’m like, ‘Oh no! she’s going to get hurt!’ But I tried to do my best.”
In Chavez’s speech he said, “I don’t like to be the center of attention. I didn’t want any recognition for this at all, but the moment I saw this young lady running across the street yelling, ‘She’s unconscious! She’s unconscious!’ there was no doubt in my mind that I needed to do something.”
Chavez explained, like Rivera, he put his car in park and took off running.
“After I saw the video, I thought, ‘That was pretty stupid.'” he joked, explaining that it was like being on Frogger.
Chavez finished by thanking everyone for jumping in to help.
True to a Good Samaritan’s character, Edelstein explained that the people there being honored that day weren’t the only ones acting as Good Samaritans that day.
Edelstein said, “There was at least 20 people, you know, stopping traffic, being helpful.”
Jokingly, he goes on to say, “I was the fool who jumped in front of the care and then punch the window out.”
All joke aside, while all these people put their lives in danger, they potentially saved many lives by what they did.
