DuPage honors three for lifesaving efforts

Ruth Carlson listened intently three years ago when she heard a ruckus outside her Wheaton Bank & Trust office.

A senior vice president, the Wheaton native was helping a client when she heard an angry voice in the lobby.

A 41-year-old gunman had walked into the bank on Sept. 5, 2008, and taken about a dozen people hostage. The three-hour standoff ended when the gunman, Michael Ray Long, committed suicide.

Thanks in large part to Carlson’s calm and measured response in dealing with the intruder, no one else was injured.

The DuPage County Board on Tuesday presented Carlson with the Sperling Award in recognition of how she reacted during those tense moments.

DuPage residents Joel Arnier and Jake Howard also received the award, which celebrates selfless and lifesaving acts, for their own actions in two other life-or-death situations.

The award was created in 2007 when the county board presented it to Bruce Sperling Jr.’s family members. Sperling, a Lombard Bible Church pastor, and his brother tried to rescue a man whose kayak capsized at the Glen Palmer Dam on the Fox River in 2006. All three men died.

Sperling’s widow Jill said the award pays homage to her husband’s motto, “It’s not about me.”

Until now, no one else had received the award.

Board members applauded Carlson’s collaboration with police and SWAT teams during the standoff at the bank. Carlson said she drew on her psychology degree to keep the assailant calm and to gain his trust. She said she asked him questions about his childhood.

“If you can connect with someone, perhaps you can divert from whatever is going on in their life,” she said.

Kneeling in the bank lobby, she said the group of hostages acted as a team and prayed in a “big whisper.”

Three years later, Carlson said she doesn’t consider herself a hero.

“You just react when something occurs,” Carlson said.

Arnier, another award recipient, cringes at the “hero title.”

Although he was off-duty at the time, the Addison firefighter-paramedic said he was simply doing his job when he responded to a mother’s panicked screams on May 10.

Her 20-month-old daughter had fallen into the Fox River. Arnier rushed from where he was fishing to administer CPR to the unconscious girl.

“I was just helping someone who needed help,” Arnier said.

The girl regained consciousness and started crying.

“It’s one of the best things you could hear from a baby in that situation,” he said.

Howard also was on a fishing trip when he performed CPR on an elderly man July 26 near the Black River in South Haven, Mich.

Howard’s friend got seasick so the group cut their fishing trip short and headed back to shore. There, they saw an unresponsive man in the water near a dock. He was not breathing.

The Glen Ellyn teenager had completed his CPR certification classes at Wheaton College only five weeks earlier.

“I was really scared,” Howard said. “Instinct kind of kicked in. I wasn’t really comprehending it at the time.”

The man started breathing again because of Howard’s efforts, but was later pronounced dead at a Grand Rapids hospital. If Howard didn’t know CPR, he said the man may have died by the dock.

“I can’t imagine what it would be like if I didn’t know in that situation,” he said.