In its 23 years, the Black Swamp Humanitarian Awards committee has presented 342 awards to individuals
who have stepped forward to help in emergency situations without hesitation, sometimes aiding complete
strangers.
On Friday, the committee honored 16. The honorees’ efforts ranged from a woman who rescued her neighbor
who had become disoriented and fallen in the snow, to a man who witnessed a fiery crash and pulled two
teenagers to safety, to a student who gave CPR to a professor.
Alex Depew, of Pemberville, was presented with the Life Risk Award for his actions on Dec. 9.
While traveling to his home, Depew witnessed a fiery car crash at the intersection of Ohio 199 and Ohio
105. A vehicle tried to pass a semi-truck at a high rate of speed, and while trying to maneuver the
pass, the vehicle went off the road and into a ditch, overturned and went through a field before
traveling into the Depew family’s property.
Flames were shooting out from under the vehicle’s hood.
“I was just feeling like, I got to do something or those kids are probably going to die,” Depew told a
Sentinel-Tribune reporter.
Seeing passengers trapped in the car, Depew went down into the ditch to free them. He was aided by the
help of a semi-truck driver who steadied his hand while he kicked in a car window.
Down in the ditch, Depew grabbed the hand of a 17-year-old Perrysburg resident and pulled him from the
vehicle.
Next, he reached back into the car for the other teen who he carried up the bank.
The flames were two feet away from Depew when he rescued the teens. Minutes after he brought them to
safety, flames entered the vehicle’s interior.
If it had not been for her neighbor, Sandra Schroeder, Laura Carlson, of Perrysburg, said she would have
frozen to death on a cold February day earlier this year.
Schroeder was headed outside to warm up her car before she planned to leave for the doctor’s when she
heard Carlson faintly yelling for help.
Carlson had become disoriented and had fallen in the snow by her shed.
“She was blue and she was soaked and her hair was ice,” Schroeder said.
Schroeder, who has health problems and is not supposed to lift, scooped up the woman and took her to her
warm car.
She called for help, wrapped up Carlson in blankets, and comforted and talked to her.
“The doctors said I was hypothermic and I was out there about two hours,” Carlson said. “I would
definitely have froze to death had she not found me when she did.
“I owe that woman my life. How do you thank someone for that?”
In presenting the Service to Others award to her neighbor, Carlson said “I don’t know what I would do
without this girl. She not only saved my life, she is my best friend.”
It may not have been a coincidence that Aubrey Stamper arrived a half-hour early for her Bowling Green
State University class on Nov. 16, 2010.
While waiting for her class to start, another student came in asking if anyone knew CPR. Aubrey had
learned CPR over a year earlier, but had never put her training to use.
Stamper rushed into the classroom across the hall and saw one professor holding up the professor who had
collapsed, Brent Nicholson. He had passed out and was not breathing.
“Everything happened so fast,” she said, even though others later told her she had been administering CPR
for 8 to 10 minutes until the EMTs arrived. The professor was at the time considered dead, but police
told Aubrey, who plans to become a physician’s assistant, her efforts allowed the EMTs to bring him back
to life.
Nicholson died three weeks later, but Stamper’s efforts gave his family the opportunity to say goodbye to
him.
Stamper, in accepting her award on Friday, said giving CPR to the professor felt like “giving back” to
her grandfather who also died of a heart attack.
“I know it means a lot to them to be able to say goodbye,” Stamper said.
Stamper was presented with a Good Samaritan award.
Five others were also presented with Good Samaritan awards:
• Wayne residents Cameron Engle and his uncle, Mark Engle, were commended for aiding a 21-year-old
Waterville woman whose van had planted front-end first in a ditch in rural Wood County on Aug. 30, 2010.

The woman was pinned between the two seats and complained of her head, back and leg hurting.
Given his former volunteer experience with the Jerry City Fire Department, Cameron Engle said, “I knew
not to move her.
“I just kept asking her questions, trying to keep her talking to me because she just wanted to go to
sleep,” he said.
The Engles called for help, waited with the woman and comforted her until rescue crews arrived.
• Glenna Wilhelm-Philo, of Custar, still does not know the name of the woman she helped rescue from a
rollover accident on Ohio 281 on Feb. 13.
“I didn’t think anything of it, I just went over to see what was happening to her,” she said. “I couldn’t
have left her out there. It was really cold and she was bleeding.”
Wilhelm-Philo took her to her church, St. Louis Catholic Church. There, she and a nurse who also attends
there helped clean up the woman and comforted her until rescue crews arrived.
“There was nobody else around. When you have to do things, you do them,” she said in accepting her award
Friday.
• On March 18, then-Clay High School seniors Shane Gaghen and Nick Isbell were fishing in the Maumee when
they became involved in a river rescue of a Toledo man who had been swept away by the current.
They rescued fellow fisherman Gary Spaulding who was swept away in the river when he tried to jump out of
the way of a fish another fisherman had caught. When doing so, he stepped into a hole in the river, went
underwater which caused his waders to fill and rendered him unable to stand.
Seeing he was in trouble, Gaghen and Isbell followed him down the bank and were eventually able to pull
him to shore by his fishing pole at a shallow part of the river.
Spaulding was cold, shaken up and could not talk. He was then taken to St. Luke’s Hospital for treatment
of hypothermia.
Retired Sentinel-Tribune reporter Jenise Fouts was also honored Friday by the Humanitarian Awards
committee for serving as the “voice of the Black Swamp Humanitarian awards” for the last two decades.

Fouts was able to “capture the bravery of the recipients along with their willingness to go out of their
way to assist strangers in need.”
Compassion was the trademark of her stories, according to committee members.
Fouts was presented with a Special Achievement award.