The Hero Who Doesn’t Want to Be

It doesn’t matter that he’s told it hundreds of times or that we’ve read it hundreds more. When Daniel Hernández recounts the sequence of events that followed after Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot and struck in the head, one’s stomach tightens and you come to ask yourself the question, “What would I have done?”

In spite of the fact that the world sees his resolution and calmness to apply pressure and hold her head after she’d been shot as an act of heroism, Hernández, 20 years old, refuses to be considered a hero. During his speech in Tucson honoring the victims, Barack Obama, the very President of the United States, had to make a respectful joke and tell him that, whether he liked it or not, he was a hero. Enough with the modesty.

Hernández works in the Arizona state office of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. He had already worked there in the past in 2008 as an intern. He admires her greatly and thinks that no one has fought “for Arizona and its citizens” like Giffords has. The day of the attack, Hernández was preparing for a meeting with citizens in the La Toscana mall in northern Tucson when he heard shots.

“I saw everyone running and Gabby lying on the ground,” he explained. “I ran toward where the shots were coming from.”

If these statements don’t prove his strength of character, then heroes simply don’t exist. “Gabby was lying in her own blood; I lifted her up and held her head so she wouldn’t choke.” No, Hernández has no formal medical training. “Only basic knowledge of first aid — what everybody knows.”

“Keeping calm” — that is the explanation for his success. “If I would have let myself act on my first impulse, I would have dropped to the floor or ran away.” Again, modestly, “I did what I had to do, what anyone would have done.”

Hernández, a University of Arizona student, is cut out for politics. For example, he doesn’t say whether the tragedy has changed his opinion about possession of firearms. Nor does he want to talk about immigration reform, although he notes that his father is American but his mother is from Nogales, Mexico, “a legal resident with a visa, but she’s not a citizen of this country.” In spite of occasionally having represented Tucson’s homosexual community, he ducks the question and generalizes when he’s asked if, upon entering politics, he would be one of the few openly gay politicians to work in the United States.

“Education is my priority,” he affirms, clarifying his principles. “I’ve worked with many groups committed to providing equal opportunity,” he adds. Hernández has been on an emotional roller coaster since one week ago. Now he has to get off. Maybe when the media stops occupying his agenda and he has some time to reflect, he’ll realize what he did. Maybe from then on the phrase “just like everyone else” won’t leave his mouth so freely.