Victor Leon White, Sr.

Victor Leon White, Sr., helped to save Herbert Reinhardt III from burning, Glenolden, Pennsylvania, August 16, 2000. Reinhardt, 30, remained in the driver’s seat of a van after the vehicle left the roadway, struck and knocked over a fuel pump at a service station, then crashed through a concrete-block wall of a building housing an office. The van came to rest partially inside the building and caught fire. Traveling in the vicinity, White, 41, stopped at the scene when he saw the van in the building. He entered the smoke-filled office through its front door and approached the driver’s side of the van, where another man had partially removed Reinhardt through the window of the driver’s door. Despite flames filling the van’s cargo area, White also grasped Reinhardt, and together the men fully removed him from the van and carried him outside to safety. Taken to the hospital for treatment, Reinhardt sustained a laceration to his right wrist, from which he recovered, and he singed his hair.