‘True heroism’ in extraordinary situations: Canyon County honors 2 fast-acting residents

Dawn Houghton said she didn’t think anyone was inside the burning car until she saw two hands beating on a window.

She pulled over and ran toward the smoke.

“I didn’t see her; all I saw was the hands,” Houghton said.

Houghton, 55, of Parma, was one of two people honored by Canyon County with the Life Saving Medal on Thursday morning.

Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue presented the awards at the county administration building before the honorees’ friends and family members.

Houghton, a senior certified property assessor, said she thought someone was burning weeds on Aug. 6 on the side of Apple Valley Road in Parma.

“It wasn’t until I was driving beside the car — it was so full of smoke — that I saw her hitting the window,” Houghton told the Idaho Statesman after the ceremony.

She said she tried to get into the burning car until she realized she couldn’t open the door. She didn’t have her phone so she ran back to her vehicle, called 911 and grabbed a tool her dad had gifted her that could be used as both a seat belt cutter and window breaker.

It was so big and bulky that she’d been considering throwing it out for years, thinking she’d never need it.

Using that tool, she was able to free the driver, sustaining injuries herself in the process. She pushed the driver down the road, afraid the car could explode at any minute, and waited with her until help arrived.

That driver, she later learned, was Maria Arteaga, who attended Houghton’s ceremony and cried through much of it.

“My family thanks Dawn for all her heroism and everything she did to save my mom that day,” Oscar Arteaga told the Statesman. “Without her, we would be in a very different situation.”

Houghton was able to hold herself together until she was surprised with a second award, a certificate of appreciation from the Pentagon. It came attached with a note from her brother, a colonel stationed there.

“He couldn’t be here, so I guess that was his way of getting one in there,” Houghton said, explaining her tears. “Because he knew it would get me.”

Man saves drowning, missing Nampa child

The other award went to 75-year-old Nampa resident Larry Haughness for saving a child from a canal.

Six-year-old Violet Bissel’s caregiver reported her missing on Sept. 6, and deputies headed to the scene to begin looking for her.

At about the same time, Haughness and his wife were walking in a nearby Nampa park when they heard a small voice. Walking over to a canal, they saw a little girl who seemed to be trying to swim.

“I thought, it’s Idaho, and we’re weird, but somebody trying to swim is a little strange in the canal,” Haughness told the Statesman. “And then she went under, and my wife said, ‘She’s drowning.’”

Haughness took off his shoes and jumped in the water. By that time, all he could see was her hair. He was able to pull her ashore while a maintenance worker called 911.

Haughness said he still often thinks about that day.

“You try to go, ‘Well, that’s just the way things were, and it was OK,’ and move on,” Haughness said. “But there’s trauma there, and you still relive some of those moments. I still see, sometimes, her hair and want to pull it up. But I’m just fortunate that we were there.”

Sheriff Donahue ended the ceremony by thanking the heroes.

“True heroism is not found in the absence of danger, but the willingness to confront it for the sake of others,” Donahue said. “And I think what we saw today encapsulates all of that.”