Des Plaines teacher wins Carnegie Award for saving student

Barely two weeks into a new teaching job at a Des Plaines alternative school, Christopher Adam Skeet faced perhaps the biggest test of his educational career, and life.

At about 9:30 a.m. Sept. 15, 2008, a 16-year-old student with emotional and behavioral issues ran away from Camelot, a school for children and adolescents with special needs near downtown Des Plaines.

School personnel were dispatched in different directions from the school on Prairie Avenue.

Skeet and the Camelot School principal found the boy. He was sitting on a concrete wall overlooking the river near Northwest Highway and River Road.

The usually tranquil river was raging, swollen after heavy rainstorms.

When the boy saw them, he jumped up onto the sea wall.

"He wanted to run on the street but the street was flooded," Skeet said, "so he had nowhere to go but get up on that wall."

Skeet said he and the principal stopped in their tracks. He slowly took his wallet and cell phone from his pockets, thinking he might have to jump into the water at any moment.

"We tried to talk him down and explain that it was dangerous," Skeet said. "He listened for about 30 seconds and he got bored with us and jumped in."

As they watched, the boy went underwater. The swirling currents pulled him downstream into the middle of the river within seconds.

Skeet jumped in. He swam toward the boy, whom he reached with ease with the aid of the currents.

Getting back to shore was another story.

"I knew I was in trouble (then)," Skeet said. "I wasn't really thinking, that's probably why I jumped. I really started thinking when I felt the current."

A former Marine, Skeet is trained to rescue people from water. But his training involved pulling people out of swimming pools, not a raging torrent, he said.

He mustered all his strength to swim against the current, while pulling the panicked teenager along.

"He wasn't fighting me. He was just freaking out trying not to drown," Skeet said. "I was already kind of tired. I had 30 seconds to get to the wall otherwise I was going to be out of energy. I just grabbed him by the collar and with my free hand and free feet I just paddled as hard as I could toward the shore."

By that time, police and spectators had gathered along the roadway. As Skeet neared the wall, another man jumped into the water to help and all three were pulled out.

"I think 99 out of a 100 people would have done the same thing," said Skeet, now 32, and a counselor and substitute teacher at Camelot School. "I guess I just was at the right place at the right time."

Skeet said when he saw the boy in school the next day, "he thanked me."

For his courageous act, Skeet was recently awarded the Carnegie Hero Medal.

He is among 22 recipients of the 2010 award, which recognizes extraordinary acts of civilian heroism by Americans and Canadians.

The Pittsburgh-based Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, established by industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1904, has recognized 9,349 awardees.

Carnegie started the fund after a coal mine explosion in Pittsburgh killed 179 miners, and two more who went in after them.

"The basic requirement for this award is that the rescuer has to risk his own life to an extraordinary degree, while saving or attempting to save the life of another person," said Walter Rutkowski, Carnegie Hero Fund executive director.

The fund has since awarded more than $32 million in one-time grants, scholarship aid, death benefits and continuing assistance.

Skeet was selected for the award after the commission reviewed newspaper reports of the rescue, and later identified him through a police report.

He will receive a $5,000 grant in addition to the personalized medal, and is also eligible for scholarships.

"I'm grateful. I feel humbled," Skeet said. "I have some friends in Iraq right now who save kids every single day and they are not getting anything for it."

Though Skeet was the one who jumped into the river after the boy that day, there were others who helped and deserve credit, he said.

There will be no ceremony or public recognition. Awardees were notified by mail earlier this month and will receive their medals in about two months.

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<li><a href="/story/?id=374841">Suburban Carnegie Heroes<span class="date"> [4/21/10]</span></a></li>

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