{"id":16618,"date":"2025-10-27T13:59:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T13:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/16618\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T13:59:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T13:59:09","slug":"know-a-lehigh-valley-resident-who-deserves-to-be-called-a-hero-help-the-red-cross-honor-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/16618\/","title":{"rendered":"Know a Lehigh Valley resident who deserves to be called a hero? Help the Red Cross honor them."},"content":{"rendered":"

The American Red Cross of Pennsylvania Rivers<\/a> is accepting nominations for heroes to be recognized at the 2026 Lehigh Valley Heroes Breakfast, scheduled for March 13, 2026, at Olympus Corporation of the Americas in Upper Saucon Township. <\/p>\n

The event honors individuals and organizations, particularly veterans, who demonstrate exceptional service to their communities. Nominations are being accepted across five categories.<\/p>\n

The First Responder Veteran Hero award recognizes firefighters, law enforcement professionals, paramedics, emergency medical services representatives, or other medical professionals who are also veterans, reservists, or active duty military members. Recipients must have exhibited heroic efforts beyond their normal duties to save lives or prevent serious injury, or shown ongoing community commitment through acts of kindness, courage, or selflessness.<\/p>\n

The Wounded Veteran & Military Caregiver Award goes to individuals, companies, or organizations demonstrating leadership in addressing challenges faced by wounded warriors and military caregivers. <\/p>\n

The Veteran Employment Award recognizes excellence in hiring, training, and retaining veterans, transitioning service members, and military spouses.<\/p>\n

The Veteran Hero award honors individuals who continue serving after military service by helping other veterans or making outstanding contributions to society. <\/p>\n

The Good Samaritan Hero award, open to civilians and veterans, recognizes someone who voluntarily aided another person in distress with no obligation to do so, particularly in response to unusual, significant, or unexpected events.<\/p>\n

Last year\u2019s honorees included Veteran Hero Frederic A. Reed Jr., First Responder Veteran Heroes Officers Kaila Balatgek, Artie Owens II, and Robert Carbaugh, along with paramedics Travis Tripp, Adam Wilson, Andre Harris, Bryan Fritz, and Mehmet Barzev. Samantha Huhn received the Veteran Employment Award, Chief Gerald Lebeduik was named Veteran Hero, and Yahaira Davis earned the Good Samaritan Hero recognition.<\/p>\n

Nominations can be submitted at www.redcross.org\/lvheroes<\/a>. The organization is also seeking volunteers for its Heroes Event Committee to help plan the celebration.<\/p>\n

Generative AI was used to organize and structure information for this story, based on data provided by the American Red Cross of Pennsylvania Rivers. It was reviewed and edited by lehighvalleylive.com staff. <\/p>\n

If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The American Red Cross of Pennsylvania Rivers is accepting nominations for heroes to be recognized at the 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,12091],"class_list":["post-16618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-jersey-city"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}