An Ideal Personified

Heroes are more common now than ever, it would seem from the media barrage. The speed with which television, the Internet, magazines, even newspapers can transmit images and ideas creates new heroes every day--often only to knock them down the next. So often is the word used that its meaning gets diluted. So when we are confronted by someone whose actions seem truly heroic, applying the word seems almost trite.

Conrad Buchanan is in that category. Buchanan is the security guard who tried to catch a woman jumping from the sixth level of a parking garage at the Sherman Oaks Galleria. The woman, apparently despondent over the death of her husband and her own illness, leaped to her death after telling pedestrians to move out of the way.

Buchanan was one of those pedestrians, yet he stayed put, hoping to break the woman’s fall and perhaps save her life. Instead, his neck was broken. He may be paralyzed from the neck down. Buchanan made a flash decision to put his life before another’s--and he paid dearly for it.

Buchanan’s friends and family said last week that “that’s just the way he is.” Typical. Those who sacrifice rarely publicize it. Those willing to help their fellow human beings rarely think it through. They just do it. And in the process, they reveal what it means to be human--and the vast unused capacity for selflessness. Heroes may seem more common than ever, but Buchanan reminds us that true heroism remains rare indeed.