{"id":105248,"date":"2016-05-05T16:23:22","date_gmt":"2016-05-05T22:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/biden-awards-demby-a-medal-for-stopping-sex-assault\/"},"modified":"2016-05-05T16:23:22","modified_gmt":"2016-05-05T22:23:22","slug":"biden-awards-demby-a-medal-for-stopping-sex-assault","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/biden-awards-demby-a-medal-for-stopping-sex-assault\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden awards Demby a medal for stopping sex assault"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"In
In this photo tweeted by the University of Colorado on April 8, Vice President Joe Biden hugs University of Colorado student Max Demby, of Cortez, for breaking up a sexual assault on campus last spring. Biden was in Boulder as part of the White House\u2019s Week of Action campaign.<\/span>University of Colorado<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Last spring, University of Colorado student Max Demby, of Cortez, was credited with breaking up a sexual assault on Boulder campus. Last month, he received a White House award for his action.<\/p>\n

Vice President Joe Biden made Demby the centerpiece of his speech at CU during the White House\u2019s Week of Action campaign during Sexual Assault Awareness Month in early April.<\/p>\n

Demby was walking on campus when he heard a woman\u2019s screams and found a man pinning her against a wall. The attacker then fled, and Demby walked the woman home. Police eventually arrested the attacker.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt began and ended before I could even comprehend what was happening,\u201d said Demby, who graduated from Montezuma-Cortez High School.<\/p>\n

During Biden\u2019s speech, the vice president brought Demby to the lectern and praised his courage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not so easy \u2026 he prevented a sexual assault. Max is a hero. Like my son Beau, who just passed away \u2026 when he was a sophomore at Penn, did the same thing,\u201d Biden said.<\/p>\n

The CU-Boulder Police Department stated that the \u201cevent would have ended much worse than it did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Demby, a fifth-year concurrent accounting student, disagreed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess I don\u2019t think of myself as a hero as much as someone who did the right thing,\u201d he told USA Today College. \u201cNot right by my standards, right based on what everyone should do. Because I truly believe everybody should do what they can to intervene in a situation like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery guy has a woman in their life they care about,\u201d Demby told USA Today College. \u201cAs soon as you realize that sexual assault could happen to a loved one, like a sister or girlfriend or someone\u2019s mother, it hits a lot closer to home. I think that would be the way I would try to involve men on campuses nationwide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Demby was awarded the Vice Presidential Coin of Courage.<\/p>\n

It happened after Demby, CU Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), the student government\u2019s tri-executives and basketball player Josh Scott greeted the vice president.<\/p>\n

Biden gave Demby a hug and the coin.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe tradition is that if someone gives you one of these coins, only the president and vice president have them,\u201d said Demby, who added there are string attached. \u201cIf I should ever meet him again and I have it with me, drinks are on him. If I don\u2019t, drinks are on me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Demby is an unusual student athlete. He\u2019s one of the students who run alongside the CU mascot during football games. They\u2019re known as the \u201cRalphie Runners.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

broke up attack on CU campus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105249,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[13,60,36,5482,524],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-105248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-montezuma-county","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-president-barack-obama","tag-sexual-assault"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105248","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105248"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105248\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105249"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105248"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=105248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}