David Fleischer photo
Concord resident Geovanny Hidalgo hops in the driver’s seat, where he was sitting when he called police after witnessing a crime. Mr. Hidalgo was presented with the Louis Lenkinski Memorial Award (son Lionel is shown left). Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber also attended to congratulate the ‘hero’.
Vaughan
October 27, 2007 08:15 AM
By: David Fleischer, Staff Writer
Naturally, if you ask Geovanny Hidalgo if he is a hero, he deflects such a notion.
On the other hand, the dozens of colleagues and dignitaries who gathered Thursday to recognize him suggest otherwise.
“It’s overwhelming,” he said. “Even though they said I was the right person at the right time, any other driver would have done the same thing.”
Mr. Hidalgo, a 40-year-old Concord resident and TTC bus driver, was presented with the Louis Lenkinski Memorial Award for his efforts earlier this year to stop a crime.
He was driving southbound on Bathurst Street when he spotted a man throwing rocks at the windows of the Chabad Midtown Jewish Community Centre, near St. Clair Avenue. Two other men were laughing alongside.
Mr. Hidalgo immediately alerted police, who arrived in time to arrest the men who were decked out in white supremacist paraphernalia. One man was charged by Toronto police with mischief.
“You could have driven on, turned a blind eye, but you chose not to,” said Lionel Lenkinski, the son of the man after whom the award is named.
“This was not a small, insignificant act, but rather a great deed.”
Louis Lenkinski was a Holocaust survivor who served as a former executive member of the Canadian Jewish Congress Ontario Region (CJC) and a vice-chair of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
His son described Mr. Hidalgo’s actions as “a greet deed that I am truly thrilled has been recognized by the presentation of this award in my father’s memory.”
He said it was all the more fitting since Mr. Hidalgo is a member of a trade union, a movement for which his father vociferously fought.
“Louis would have liked you because of your understanding ... because of the courage you displayed,” said Canadian Jewish Congress CEO Bernie Farber, who once worked with Mr. Lenkinski.
While Mr. Hidalgo was modest enough to point out he was not even on his normal bus route, he was actually in precisely the right place at the right time, said Fredelle Brief who chairs the CJC’s Community Relations Committee, a role once held by Mr. Lenkinski.
“By exercising his civic duty, Mr. Hidalgo helped ensure that perpetrators of a crime directed at a symbolic religious community building and committed under the cover of darkness, were brought into the light,” Ms. Brief said.
Making his response all the more impressive, he had only been working with the TTC for a few months.
Prior to that he had worked as a supply teacher with the York Catholic District School Board and his father’s landscaping business.
The 25-year resident of the Dufferin-Clark area has two children and scoffed at the idea that he should be called a hero.
Mr. Hidalgo said his job includes a community service component that goes beyond simply driving. He cited a fellow driver who stopped to pull a woman out of a gutter and said, “That’s heroism. This was just common sense.”
As for being in the right place at the right time, he said the accused stayed at the scene long enough that he passed them a second time before they were arrested.
TTC Chief General Manager Gary Webster praised Mr. Hidalgo’s work as did provincial Minister of Community Safety and Correctional Services, Monte Kwinter.
Despite all the accolades from so many dignitaries, Mr. Hidalgo was quick to spread the credit.
“More than anything, they’re honouring the TTC drivers, the instructors and everyone who told me exactly what we should do,” he said.