CHP Officer

California Highway Patrol

2/27/1986

Special Service Award (Silver)

On February 27, 1986, a fellow CHP officer had stopped to question a female hitchhiker on the freeway. The woman started to approach him, then suddenly darted into the roadway and stopped in the middle lane of traffic. Incredibly, the woman escaped being struck in the heavy early evening traffic, however, a near miss with a large truck sent her running into the center divider. The officer on the scene radioed for help, afraid that any action on his part might send the woman running back into the roadway. Officer Graves responded to the call for assistance. Moments after his arrival, the woman walked from the center divider toward the officer on the shoulder, directly into the path of an oncoming vehicle which struck her. Without hesitation, Officer Graves bolted from his patrol car, dashed across two lanes of heavy traffic, grabbed the injured woman seconds before both of them would have been hit by another vehicle, and pulled her to safety.