Kevin Barrett and Cameron Whiting were finishing up a long ocean swim when they heard screams over the Del Mar beach waves.
Barrett, a 51-year-old financial advisor from San Diego, and Whiting, a 31-year-old real estate company vice president who lives in Encinitas, looked at one another and decided to put fear aside.
Together, they rescued their swim club teammate who had just been bitten by a juvenile great white shark, taking turns swimming him to safety.
The rescue earned the duo a Carnegie Medal, the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission announced Monday.
The Pittsburgh-based commission, founded by tycoon and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1904, gives out heroism medals four times a year to those who risk themselves to an extraordinary degree saving or attempting to save the lives of others.
Also among the 18 recipients for the third quarter of the year was Richard Fierro, a San Diego native who helped take down a gunman at a Colorado Springs nightclub.
The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission has strict criteria for applicants to be named, and their own investigators certify the veracity of the reported acts of heroism.
According to the rules for the medal — which is billed as “North America’s highest honor for heroism” — a recipient must have left a position of safety, or stayed in peril when escape was possible, so they could save another person.
The shark attack happened June 2. Whiting, Barrett and the swimmer they rescued, 46-year-old Caleb Adams, were among more than a dozen members of the North County Ocean Swimmers team swimming along the Del Mar coast that morning.
Barrett said in a previous interview with the Union-Tribune he and Whiting had just finished their swim when they heard their teammate screaming around 9 a.m.
They found Adams suffering from shark bite marks to his torso, arm and hand. They later learned Adams had punched the shark twice to fend it off.
Barrett was the first to reach Adams. He flipped both himself and the injured man onto their backs before he pulled the injured man onto his chest. He began backstroking toward the shore.
Whiting and a surfer eventually caught up with them. The surfer offered up his board in the rescue attempt.
Adams was placed on the surfboard. Whiting then laid on the injured swimmer’s lower body and kicked his legs to propel the board. Barrett swam alongside them, keeping his hand on the board to steady it.
“I was able to say: ‘Cam, I’m out of gas. I need you to get on the back of the surfboard. I’ll swim next to you, but I need your strength,’” Barrett recalled in the previous interview.
Once the two could stand, they each took an arm and got the victim up the beach to a lifeguard truck. They triaged wounds until Adams could be taken to a hospital, where he would eventually recover from his injuries.
Fierro’s honors come nearly two years after a gunman in body armor opened fire at Club Q, an LGBTQ-friendly bar in Colorado in November 2022. Fierro, a Colorado resident, is a graduate of Mira Mesa High and San Diego State University. He was with his family in the bar when the shooter opened fire.
Fierro, a former Army major with four combat tours under his belt, later told the Union-Tribune he heard gunfire, saw muzzle flashes, smelled cordite and hit the ground. The gunman shot a Navy sailor who tried to stop him, but the wounded sailor fought back. Fierro — unaware of the sailor — quickly rushed the gunman, wrested away his firearm and repeatedly pummeled it into the back of the assailant’s head.
Five people died — including the longtime boyfriend of Fierro’s daughter — and 25 more were injured in the ambush. The gunman pleaded guilty to state and federal crimes and is serving a life sentence.
Each of this quarter’s rescuers will receive a $7,500 financial grant and medal, likely presented to them in a ceremony attended by their respective elected officials and first responders in the coming months, a commission official said.