Our everyday hero
It seems appropriate that it happened on Easter Sunday, a holiday replete with images of rebirth. Because on that day, a woman lying half-naked on a porch, her hands and feet bound with duct tape, handcuffs and cloth restraints, must surely have felt she was being resurrected from the dead when Peter Hamilton responded to her pleas for help.
As the Star’s Edward Keenan recounted, she told the Leslieville man as he walked by with his dog: “I’ve been kidnapped and held hostage for five days.” Even more chilling, she told him the man who had taken her prisoner was inside the house and had a gun and a knife. What followed was nothing less than heroic. Hamilton could have run for help. Who wouldn’t? But he couldn’t abandon the woman. He says he would have carried her to safety if he could have, but her restraints prevented that. Instead, he stayed and used the only tool he had — nail clippers — to cut away her restraints.
At any moment, Hamilton could have been confronted by the man in the house. And indeed, he was. But he didn’t run and he didn’t leave the woman. Instead, he stood up and braced himself for a confrontation.
Fortunately, it didn’t happen. The man ran off. Eventually other passersby called police, who arrived just after Hamilton had removed the woman’s restraints.
Hamilton did not follow the standard police advice for people who find themselves in an emergency situation. He didn’t leave the woman and call for help from a safe distance away.
Not everyone should jump into a potentially dangerous situation. Depending on the circumstances, that might just make things go from bad to worse. But Hamilton clearly saw a person in immediate danger and acted without hesitation. As he recalled: “You react. Right away. You don’t have any time to do any sort of analysis.”
That’s what has people calling Toronto police to ask if they can nominate him for a Community Member Award, which recognizes citizens for unselfish acts of bravery and courage. Yet Hamilton says he doesn’t feel like a hero and even thinks he didn’t do enough.
Hamilton says he didn’t do more than anyone else would have. We all know that’s not true. Still, there’s a comforting element of truth in his words. Everyday people can become heroes.
As the alien played by Jeff Bridges says of humans in the movie Starman: “You are at your very best when things are worst.”
Hamilton, an ordinary man, proved that right.
Toronto man’s outside-the-box actions in helping save a kidnapped woman were nothing short of heroic