Up all night, sleep all day…

The first definition of a “hero” in the dictionary describes one in the mythological or legendary sense, but the idea of a hero being “A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life” is more fitting for the examples I’m going to use.  Heroes are all over and take many forms.  Firemen, police officers, parents, musicians, celebrities, and teachers, are all examples of heroes.  Firemen and police got even more in the public eye as heroes after 9/11/01.  The following examples are a television show and a movie that have real life heroes. 

I watched an episode of “CSI: Miami” on Friday night (10/7/06).  The main heroes in this show are Lieutenant Horatio Caine, investigators Calleigh Duquesne and Eric Delko, and Dr. Alexx Woods.  The episode I saw, called “Slow Burn” involved two murders in the Florida Everglades, one of a hunter, and one of a young woman.          

The show starts with a huge fire occuring in the Everglades, and a ranger brings Eric and Alexx to examine the body of a hunter that he found who was shot dead.  They are nearly burned alive when the supposedly controlled fire suddenly rages out of control and traps them.  They are only saved by covering themselves and the body with a fireproof blanket. 

Another body is discovered, this time it’s a young woman who is partly burned from the fire, and looks to have been beaten.  Solving both murders turns out to be a bit of a task, but eventually they figure it out by discovering clues and questioning certain people. 

The hunter’s murder is solved by questioning one of his hunting buddies.  The investigators notice he has blood on his vest, which they test and see that it’s actually mountain lion blood (meaning they were really poaching, not hunting) – but there is no human blood.  They then search the hunter’s truck and find a rifle with bullets matching those found in the dead man- the rifle actually belonged to the dead hunter.  Of course this makes him the main suspect.  He also has a fat lip, so they question it and he says they got into an argument, but he didn’t kill his friend.  In the end it turns out that his dog- who they brought on the hunting trip- is the one who actually shot the hunter.  As weird as it sounds, when the men were arguing, the dog was running around and barking, and hit the rifle which was propped up on a chair.  It was a freak accident, and the friend didn’t want to tell the CSI the truth because he was afraid they would put the dog down.

The beaten woman’s murder was a bit harder to solve.  Their first suspect was a man named Dale who denied everything of course.  The CSI found tire tracks in the everglades that they matched to his car, so they brought it in and searched it.  They found a gambler’s card with the name Julie Bryant on it, as well as a blonde hair on the seat that matched that of the dead woman.  Dale told them that when he drove off with Julie, they stopped to fool around on the side of the road when a man pulled up and started hitting the car with a baseball bat.  Julie ran out of the car and hid from him in the Glades while Dale drove off.  This made the CSI go to the casino to find the owner of the card, and found Julie’s abusive boyfriend playing a card game- he was the next suspect. 

They brought the boyfriend in for questioning, and he said that he grabbed a flare and tried to find Julie in the Glades, but he fell and got tired so he left.  His dropping the flare is what began the fire in the first place.  The investigators then show him photos of the woman’s body, and he tells them that it isn’t Julie.  This is where they get confused. 

Later, they use a spray on the outside of Dale’s car which shows blood stains.  There was a large splatter of blood on the passenger door which turns their suspicions back to Dale.  Dr. Alexx then examines a piece of the woman’s forehead and notices a ring imprint in her skull (from being punched so hard and repeatedly). 

They match this imprint to the large ring that Dale has been wearing, and then find out that the woman is actually Sandy Wilusz who has been reported missing for 3 years.  In the end, it turns out that after Dale left Julie, he picked up a hitch hiker, molested and killed her, and then left her in the Everglades.  Case closed.  One of the other investigators asks Horatio if he wants to go grab a bit to eat, but he tells them he needs a few minutes.  He then calls Sandy’s mother and tells her that her missing daughter was murdered.  You could tell how upset he was having to do this, and you can tell that even though he takes pride in his job, it’s really stressful when they can’t help someone like Sandy.  He wants to be able to protect people and be the hero, and I guess in this case though he wasn’t able to prevent Sandy’s death, he was able to give her justice and put her murderer behind bars so he couldn’t hurt anyone else.             

Another version of a hero in a movie can be found in Alfred Hitchcock’s film,
“Rear Window”.  James Stewart plays a man named J.B. “Jeff” Jeffries who becomes confined to a wheelchair with a broken leg.  Being stuck leads him to become obsessed with watching his neighbors as they play their lives across the courtyard.

Jeffries is a photographer who feels helpless from being stuck in his apartment for weeks.  One week before his cast removal he thinks he witnesses one of his neighbors, Mrs. Thornwald, getting murdered.  He then feels he has to solve the mystery since no one else seems to be trying to.           

One night, Jeffries is looking out the window and sees Mr. Thornwald leaving the house in the rain in around 2am.  When he leaves the house he takes his briefcase, which Mr. Jeffries find odd.  Jeffries on the other hand thinks he was smuggling something out of the house, but his nurse thinks he was doing business.             

Later Jeffries sees Thornwald cleaning out his briefcase and putting jewelry in it.  This is proof that he really was smuggling something out of his house.  Jeffries continues to put clues together to prove that Thornwald killed his sick wife.           

In the end, Jeffries is seen as the hero.  He felt that although he was confined to a wheel chair and unable to work, he could still help people.  Even though people such as the detective tried to tell him that the murder never happened, he never gave trying to help.

As you can see from these examples, normal people can be heroes.  Whether you grew up with superheroes such as Superman and Batman, read books where the hero saves the kingdom, or played video games where you have to save everyone from evil, we all have a desire to try to be heroes ourselves- even if we don’t have super powers.