Carnegie Medal Goes To Dearborn Heights Officer

DEARBORN HEIGHTS, MI — As a father of six, Dearborn Heights Police Officer Scott Keller understands the importance of family. That’s why, almost a year ago, he risked his life to save Yusfuf Salem, a then 7-year-old trapped in a fire in his home.

Now Keller is being honored as a hero by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission. Keller, a Tecumseh native, was one of 19 people from across the U.S. and Canada to receive the Carnegie Medal Tuesday. While Keller shrugged it off as just being at the right place at the right time, the Pittsburgh-based organization said it was an uncommon act of bravery that kept a little boy alive.

"I went to the living room to get the kids out,” Salsabeel Tolba told WXYZ-TV after the July 29, 2016 fire at her Country Lane townhouse. “I couldn't find Yusuf."

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The boy was on the second floor of his family’s two-story home after the fire broke out in the kitchen on the first floor. Keller responded and dashed into the townhome, dropping to his hands and knees to get a better look through the dense, black smoke.

Keller crawled a short distance into the house, shouting for Yusuf. The boy responded, but, unable to breathe, Keller exited the unit for air. Given a shirt that he then held to his face, he re-entered the home and this time, followed Yusuf’s voice to locate him on the steps leading to the second floor.

Keller picked him up and, holding the shirt against Yusuf’s face, descended the steps and returned to the front door. He exiting to safety, handed Yusuf to another person and then collapsed to the ground.

Both the boy and Keller required hospital treatment for smoke inhalation. Even with that trauma, Keller missed just two days of work. “Really, really grateful for him,” Tolba told WXYZ-TV. “I owe him my life I owe my child's life."

Keller told the television station he couldn’t stand by and not do something. He put himself in Tolba’s shoes. "Most important," Keller said. "Nobody wants to lose a child."

The Carnegie Medal is awarded to those who risk their lives to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the lives of others, the organization said in a news release. Four of the 19 awardees died in the performance of their heroic acts. Keller was the lone Michigan hero honored.

The heroes announced today bring to 39 the number of awards made to date in 2017 and to 9,953 the total number since the Pittsburgh-based Fund's inception in 1904.

Carnegie Hero Fund Commissioner Chair Mark Laskow said each of the awardees or their survivors will also receive a financial grant. Throughout the 113 years since the Fund was established by industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, $39.1 million has been given in one-time grants, scholarship aid, death benefits, and continuing assistance.

The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission’s purpose is to recognize persons who perform acts of heroism in civilian life in the United States and Canada, and to provide financial assistance for those disabled and the dependents of those killed helping others.

“We live in a heroic age,” Andrew Carnegie wrote in the opening lines of the Commission’s founding Deed of Trust in 1904. “Not seldom are we thrilled by deeds of heroism where men or women are injured or lose their lives in attempting to preserve or rescue their fellows.”

Officer Scott Keller is second from the right in the above photo. Photo courtesy of the city of Dearborn Heights.