Georgia State Defense Force Staff Sgt. Joseph Spavone was presented the Georgia Medal for Valor for an act of heroism that saved the life of a child in March.

Spavone, who is with the operations and training section of the SDF’s 2nd Brigade, received the medal from Maj. Gen. David B. Poythress, Georgia’s Adjutant General, during a ceremony at the state Department of Defense complex. Spavone, a tall and unassuming orthopedic technician from Newnan, gave a humbled smile and said, "I just did what any one of us would have done, sir," as he saluted General Poythress.

On March 22, he and Maj. Ray Sanford, the officer in charge of the 14 SDF soldiers assisting with traffic and crowd control at Macon’s annual International Cherry Blossom Festival, were making their rounds when one of the troopers radioed a "man down call."

Spavone said he and Sanford ran to the soldier’s location and found a woman standing next to her car, holding a 19-month-old boy and screaming, "my baby, oh my God, my baby someone please help me."

He then gently took the child in his arms to find out if he could determine what was wrong, he said. Retrieving a blanket from the woman’s vehicle and laying it on the trunk, Spavone said he put the child down and began making his assessment of its condition. The first thing he noticed, he said, was that the youngster was not breathing and that his skin color had turned from white to black from the lack of oxygen.

He began CPR procedures in an attempt to get the youth’s heart beating again, he said. Spavone related that he "puffed and thumped" the boy through one cycle of CPR, all the while relaying information through Sanford to civilian emergency medical technicians trying to make their way through the 50,000-plus crowd to the get to the youth.

"Suddenly the youngster’s heart started beating, slowly at first then growing in intensity, and I thought to myself ‘Thank you God for not taking this child,’" he said.

When the ambulance did arrive, the EMTs quickly put the youngster onto a stretcher, loaded him and his still somewhat hysterical mother into the ambulance and sped away, Spavone said. That was the last he saw of them, he recounted.