By: Gabe Pressman (WNBC-TV New York) - Monday, July 16th, 2007
(Op/Ed – Commentary)
He was only 23, but to his 37,000 fellow police officers he was a role model and a hero..
The death of Officer Russel Timoshenko was a crushing blow to all his brothers on the force. More than 150 had stood vigil near his hospital bed as doctors and nurses fought to save his life. But when the battle was lost, those scores of officers filed past his body and many were weeping.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said: "Officer Timoshenko made the ultimate sacrifice with unflinching bravery and dedication to duty."
New Yorkers marvel at the courage and bravery of young men like Timoshenko. We should be grateful that heroes have appeared again and again in our history -- to protect us and serve us in time of trouble. There were the 343 firefighters who perished on Sept. 11 and in its aftermath, trying to save people trapped in the shattered buildings. Dozens of police officers died then, too.
As we celebrate the life of this young hero and his brothers mourn him, we can think about what makes a hero.
True heroes, it's been said, never know they are heroes. They just find themselves, as a young doctor, Xavier Emmanuelli, pointed out, in a situation for which they have been preparing, unwittingly, all their lives. Then they do the right thing. "A hero," the doctor said, "understands that he is a tool."
Timoshenko and his partner, Officer Herman Yan, were ambushed by three ex-cons when they ordered a BMW to pull over in Brooklyn last week. Both officers were hit in a fusillade of bullets. Though he lingered for most of the week, while his parents prayed and wept, Timoshenko died. Yan survived.
The officers didn't expect the attack from the thugs. They were just performing their duty, as they had many times before. Though they were young, they understood the hazards confronting them every day they patrolled the streets of Brooklyn.
What makes a hero? In March, two auxiliary officers, both unarmed, were shot down on a Greenwich Village street. The killer, David Garvin, who had just slain a restaurant worker, had two guns and 100 rounds of ammunition. The two auxiliary cops tried to hold him for regular cops, but he shot and killed them. The auxiliary officers, Eugene Marshalik and Nicholas Pekearo, had no ammunition, but they had courage. Their mission, according to their mandate, was: "Patrol, observe, report."
They tried -- and lost their lives. Marshalik, a 19-year-old Russian immigrant, was an NYU student. Pekearo, 28, a writer, is expecting his first book to be published soon.
Nor are cops New York's only heroes. Wesley Autrey, jumped from a subway platform to the tracks as a subway train sped into a station. He lay on top of the man who had fallen on the tracks, apparently a victim of a seizure. Miraculously, both men survived.
A Marine captain has his own definition of a hero: "He will endure any hardship for his comrades, to include giving his life for others; He doesn't want to be thanked for a job well done. He only wants to be with his comrades performing the mission."
Thank God we have heroes when we need them here in New York. And they never seem to be in short supply.