Civilians help officer. (The Goodness of America).

Sergeant Marcus Young is a 15-year veteran of the Ukiah, California, police department. Twice during his career suspects have pointed guns at his head, but he emerged from both harrowing incidents unscathed. Recently, however, he nearly lost his life after making a routine shoplifting arrest in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart store.

At about 9 p.m. on March 7th, he handcuffed a female shoplifting suspect and seated her in the back of his patrol car. A few minutes later her boyfriend, Neal Allen Beckman, approached the vehicle. He was wanted on an outstanding felony warrant for failure to appear in court in connection with the armed robbery and severe beating of an elderly man earlier this year. In the 1980s, he had been convicted of beating another elderly man who subsequently died from the injuries.

Beckman pulled both a gun and knife, and as he and Officer Young struggled Beckman fired several shots, striking Young in the face, neck, left hand, right arm, and chest. The officer's bullet-proof vest deflected the latter bullet.

Young was unable to remove his own gun from its holster and return fire due to his shattered upper-right arm. As Young slumped to his knees, Brett Schott, an unarmed, plain-clothes Wal-Mart security guard, jumped on Beckman from behind. Beckman's gun was now empty, but he broke free and stabbed Schott, who slumped to the ground in a pool of blood. The enraged man then ran to the patrol car and tried to wrest a rifle and shotgun from the locked gun rack. Officer Young, virtually helpless and bleeding profusely, knew that if Beckman succeeded in extricating one of the guns, he would likely kill not only him, but Schott and possibly others as well.

At this critical juncture, 17-year-old police cadet Julian Covella, who was accompanying Young on his shift that night, risked his life to assist. After radioing for help, Covella, a junior at Ukiah High School and last year's police department Cadet of the Year, ran from cover to Young's side. Young told Covella to remove the handgun from his (Young's) holster and place it in his left hand. Covella had trouble undoing the holster snap at first, but managed to extract the gun and placed it in Young's hand as instructed. He then stood aside as Young fired three or four shots toward Beckman, still in the patrol car. Young later recalled that when he heard the handcuffed shoplifter begin screaming, "I knew I had stopped the suspect." The woman was not injured.

Young, Schott, and Beckman were flown by helicopter to a local hospital, where Beckman died less than 30 minutes after arriving. Young and Schott were reported in fair condition the next day and are recovering. Cadet Covella, who participates in a Boy Scout Explorer program to acquaint young people with possible law enforcement careers, was not injured.

Officer Young intends, with the blessing of wife Stephanie and their two children, to return to his job. "I'm a police officer," he told reporters on April 2nd during his first public comments about the incident. "This is what I do."

Young, Schott, and Covella have been lauded as heroes. The parking lot shootout was profiled during the April 11th edition of The John Walsh Show, a cable-network program that salutes hometown heroes. And on May 22nd, the University of San Francisco plans to honor Young with its Community Service Award in recognition of "outstanding service" to the community.

Young, however, says that he is uncomfortable with the "hero" label, since "I was only doing what any officer would. It's Julian Covella and Brett Schott, two people who dared to come to my aid, who are the real heroes here."