By Michael O. Allen, Record Staff Writer | Thursday, March 7, 1991
The Record (New Jersey) | Four Star B | NEWS | Page B01
All the talk of heroism embarrassed Michael Moore. The 25-year-old Cliffside Park carpenter had pulled an unconscious 82-year-old man from a smoke-filled car moments before it exploded in flames. That was last year.
Wednesday, the Bergen County 200 Club, a group that serves law enforcement officers, firefighters, ambulance corps workers, and their families, gave Moore a valor award, one of its highest honors.
“I just didn’t expect this,” Moore, the son of a retired firefighter, said of the award. “I saw him and I carried him out.”
At a ceremony in the grand ballroom of the Sheraton Heights Hotel in Hasbrouck Heights, the group also honored Ramsey Patrolman Frank Alcaro with a valor award. Alcaro saved the life of a 64-year-old man trapped in a capsized boat. He also received a merit award for saving the lives of two children and an adult trapped in a burning building.
Two Fort Lee firefighters and seven policemen also received merit awards.
Alcaro, 29, the father of a 1-year-old girl, echoed the predominant feeling among the honorees when he said he reacted instinctively to situations that he was being honored for.
“I feel good about the award, but it is very humbling, because it is not something that you sit around and think about doing,” he said. “I never even gave a second thought about doing it. It was just what I had to do.”
Wallington Police Officer Richard Cavallo also thought he was doing what he had to do on June 12, when he persuaded an armed man who had already shot one person to drop his pistol. He said he was concerned for the safety of about 30 people in the vicinity of the alley where he confronted a man who had shot his wife’s alleged lover.
“He was highly agitated,” said Cavallo, an 11-year police veteran. “He didn’t want to hear anything. I informed him three times to put his weapon down. The third time, he lowered the weapon and leveled it at me.
“It’s hard to explain, but in a situation like that you just blank out everything around you and concentrate on the situation at hand.”
The man then dropped the gun.
“The amount of time that passed between the first time Officer Cavallo ordered the suspect to drop his gun and when he actually dropped it was only a few seconds,” Bergen County 200 Club Vice President Ray Farrington said in presenting the officer with the merit award. “But it was a lifetime for both the officer and the suspect.”
Also honored with merit awards were:
– Hackensack Police Detective Sgt. Michael Mordaga, Sgt. James Mordaga, Detective Sgt. Arthur Mento, and Officer Anthony Iazetti, for arresting an armed robber on Sept. 28 without firing a shot.
– Fort Lee Volunteer Fire Lt. Michael DeGidio and firefighter Patrick Kellett, who is also a policeman, for saving the life of an elderly woman who was trapped in her bedroom during a fire.
– Teaneck Police Lt. Daniel Moran, who was a sergeant on May 20, 1989, when he saved the life of a 15-year-old boy threatening suicide as he sat on the edge of a building with his legs dangling over the street, five stories below.
– Glen Rock Police Officer Daniel Brindley, who rescued a 2-year-old girl from a brook June 19.
Not all the stories had happy endings. The girl rescued in Glen Rock died several hours later, and Michael Nocero, the Cliffside Park man saved by Moore, died of causes related to smoke inhalation 21 days after being rescued.
Alcaro said police officers all over the world do heroic work without thinking of it as such. It was in the job description, he said.
As his wife, Michelle, put it: “I’m very proud of him, and these awards that he’s getting are very nice. But there are day-to-day things that he does that are equally as heroic. He’s there for accident victims, for children to look up to, there to take control in situations when nobody knows what to do.
“Being a policeman is not just a job, it’s a whole attitude about life. He’s a policeman, even when he’s not working.”
Keywords: BERGEN COUNTY; ORGANIZATION; AWARD
Caption: PHOTO – ED HILL / THE RECORD – Ramsey Patrolman Frank Alcaro showing the valor award he received Wednesday for saving four people in two incidents last year.
ID: 17335416 | Copyright © 1991, The Record (New Jersey)
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