Corrections officer at Chesterfield facility awarded medal for saving capsized boater
TRENTON – A corrections officer at a state facility in Burlington County has been honored for his off-duty heroics.
Senior Correctional Police Officer Chad Ammerman plunged from the shore into Little Egg Harbor and battled strong currents to rescue an 82-year-old man whose sailboat had capsized in June 2021.
Ammerman was named Wednesday as one of 16 recipients of the Carnegie Medal, an award given to people who risk death or serious physical injury in life-saving efforts.
According to an account from the Carnegie Hero Fund, the elderly boater, John L. McKenna, could not re-enter his vessel and floated in the harbor toward a bulkhead.
Ammerman, 41, heard McKenna’s cry for help and phoned 911, the account says.
But fearing a rescue boat would arrive too late to save the fatigued boater, Ammerman grabbed an empty plastic cooler and swam some 300 yards to McKenna.
Ammerman directed the boater to grab a handle on the cooler, while the officer backstroked toward the bulkhead.
At that point, the account said, a firefighter piloting a boat delivered McKenna and Ammerman to the bulkhead.
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Victoria Kuhn, the state’s corrections commissioner, on Wednesday said Ammerman “represents the best” of the agency.
Ammerman works at Garden State Youth Correctional Facility in Chesterfield.
“When we say we are ‘NJDOC Strong,’ this is what we mean — a willingness to put others before self, to risk one’s own safety to save another,” she said in a statement.
“I’m just grateful I could be in the right place at the right time that day to help,” Ammerman said in the statement. “I appreciate the Carnegie Hero Fund for recognizing me in this way.”
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The fund, which honors civilian recipients in the United State and Canada, was created in 1904 by businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.
Selections announced Wednesday included a posthumous honor for a Florida teenager who drowned while trying to save a motorist whose car had gone into a deep retention pond.
Among others, medals went to three people who saved a man from a shark attack off the California coast, a man who was shocked repeatedly while pulling another man from electrified train tracks in Chicago; Michigan mother who was burned over 60 percent of her body while repeatedly entering a burning house to save her four children,
Each of the recipients or their survivors will receive a financial grant.
For a list of Carnegie Heroes, visit carnegiehero.org
Jim Walsh is a senior reporter for the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal.
This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Chesterfield NJ corrections officer awarded Carnegie Medal
