“I don’t want to be called a hero,” he said. I’m still the same person I was before - I just did a good deed.”

Todd Kanno of Honeyville had been chatting on the phone with his mom last week while driving home from Ogden on I-15. On the other side of the freeway, he saw a puff of dirt and a piece of tire flying through the air.

“I’ve got to go, Mom,” he said. He hung up the phone without another word and he exited the freeway at the Willard exit, and drove back to the scene of the accident.

By the time he got there, two other drivers had stopped. One person was on the phone with 911, while another couple had helped three young children out of the car. But the driver, 26-year-old Shannon Cantwell of Brigham City, was screaming frantically, saying her niece was still trapped in the car.

According to the Utah Highway Patrol, Cantwell was driving a 1989 Dodge Colt south on I-15 on Tuesday, September 22. She was just south of the Willard Bay exit when the left rear tire separated. When she braked, she lost control of the car, veering to the right and flipping into a canal.

“I shouldn’t have been able to open that door,” Kanno said. But on the second try, he managed to open the door of the car lying upside down in the canal. He could see the bottom of the toddler’s carseat and a tiny, pink casted foot sticking up out of the water.

Kanno removed the baby from the car.

“I held her close to my body, and took her to the Tahoe,” he said. “She was pale and blue, so I started CPR, and the EMTs arrived shortly after.”

The child, 2 1/2 -year-old Amara Young, was flown by Air Ambulance to Primary Children’s Hospital where she was in intensive care last week.

Kanno said it wasn’t until the helicopter departed and he was once again headed toward home that he really had a conscious thought about what had just transpired. Getting off the freeway and back-tracking to the accident scene were actions taken on autopilot, he said. And once he was there, his only thought was to make sure everyone was out of the car.

“I pretty much cried for the rest of the night,” said Kanno. “Hearing the driver when she was screaming, seeing and feeling that baby when I pulled her out— it gets stuck in your head.”

Kanno is the son of Peggy and Larry Kanno. As a youth, he took part in many training opportunities through the Boy Scout program, and he completed an emergency first responders course at Bridgerland Applied Technology Center.

He graduated from Box Elder High School in 2008 and since then he has been working to save money for college. He is employed with Brigham City Parks and Recreation as a referee for their sports program.

At 19, Kanno said he is still trying to decide just what he wants to do with his life. He has ruled out a career in dance, and has toyed with the idea of being a paramedic, a move he isn’t so sure about right now.

“I’ve always liked helping people, and I have an interest in the medical field,” he said. He understands that emergency personnel are often traumatized by what they experience at the scene of an accident like this. The key, he said, is learning to cope with it.

Kanno’s father, a retired highway patrolman, said his son’s reaction to the day’s events are pretty typical. And while he is proud of Todd for taking that action, he isn’t a bit surprised that he did.

Amara’s condition has been upgraded to stable. She remains hospitalized, and is continuing to recover from the accident. Kanno has been to Primary Children’s hospital to visit her and her family, and they continue to update him about her condition as things change.

That visit has brought him some peace of mind, and he plans to visit her again soon.

“I still don’t feel like a hero yet,” he said. “I don’t feel like a person should be called a hero for doing something that needs to be done, something that you know should be done.”