Red Cross to honor 24 people at Hometown Heroes lunch in Long Beach

The American Red Cross on Wednesday will recognize two dozen heroes in the Long Beach area who saved lives and acted heroically in the last year.

The 12th Aual Hometown Heroes Awards Ceremony, organized by the Los Angeles Region’s Long Beach, Rio Hondo and South Bay Chapter, will be held at The Grand Event Center at noon Wednesday.

The individuals to be recognized are:

• Manuel White, a Santa Clarita resident who works for the Pasadena Fire Department. In April, while staying at a hotel in Long Beach during a training, he noticed a man having a seizure on the floor of the gym. He initiated CPR, and used an automated defibrillator provided by staff. The man woke up after a few minutes and began talking.

• Jesse Heandez, who helped save 42 people trapped in a charter bus on the 60 Freeway near the Hacienda Boulevard off-ramp on Oct. 18. Heandez was on his way to work at the North County Correctional Facility at the time he spotted the bus blocking two lanes.

• Richard and Diane Caldwell, both Long Beach Fire Department employees who were on their honeymoon at Turtle Bay Resort in Oahu, Hawaii, when they noticed a snorkeler had ventured too far out in rough seas. The Caldwells went into the water about 200 years out with their fins on and saved the snorkeler.

• Lindsey Gibbs and Mark Thayer, who alerted residents of an Inglewood apartment complex that a fire was ripping through the building on Jan. 29, 2015. They screamed for the residents to flee, and began honking their car hos to alert people to the fire.

• Dr. Atul Gupta, an emergency room doctor at Kaiser, and Chuong Vo, a Torrance police officer, were dropping their respective kids off at school when they were called upon to save a man who was unconscious and not breathing in front of Cerritos Elementary School.

• First Combat Engineer Battalion Adoption Committee, which serves active duty military and their families all over the world.

• Yvoe Dowdell, a retired Memorial Medical Center Critical Care nurse, saved her neighbor’s 18-month-old daughter who was found floating face-down in the family pool. “I was very happy that I was there in the right place at the right time,” she said. “It was great to be there for her.”

• Cody Campbell, a Los Angeles County firefighter, who saved a guest at his own wedding when the guest began to choke during a toast by his father.

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• Albert Max De La Paz, Iana Delapaz, Eryn Delapaz and Virginia Loarca. Albert was driving his daughters Eryn, 14, and Iana, 16, home from Cerritos High School when he saw a woman standing on the overpass with arms spread looking down on traffic. The family, along with Virginia Loarca, cautiously approached the woman and talked her off the bridge to safety.

• Rebecca Sawyers, a Norwalk Transit System driver, was driving her bus over the railroad tracks at the Rosecrans and Marquardt intersection and saw a car stopped at the tracks. The driver and his passengers were desperately trying to move their car off the tracks. She was able to reach Burlington Northe Santa Fe railroad dispatch and alerted the agency, avoiding a collision.

• Deputy Jason Flores, a Los Angeles County sheriff’s academy and 12 days later saved the life of a motorist by doing CPR in the carpool lane of the 210 Freeway during the rush hour traffic.

• Mike Rappleyea, Casey Hazelton, Karen Gallenson and Nadine Habif, a team that worked together to pull an unconscious man from the bottom of a swimming pool, administer CPR and use a defibrillator to save the life of a stranger.