(OSV News) — A prestigious North American awarding body is set to confer medals on two Catholic men who died in June last year while trying to save a friend in cold waters who also drowned while they were all on a hiking trip in Northern California.
The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission announced June 22 that Opus Dei “numeraries” Matthew Anthony and Matthew Schoenecker will each receive the Carnegie Medal posthumously. The bronze medal along with a monetary award is given to ordinary citizens who have demonstrated heroic acts of saving lives or attempting to save lives of people in imminent danger of death.
Founded by St. Josemaría Escrivá in 1928, Opus Dei is a personal prelature under the Holy See whose purpose is to participate in the evangelization work of the Church. It holds that Christians are to strive for holiness and to live lives “fully consistent with their faith” in the ordinariness of life, particularly “through the sanctification of their work.”
Carnegie announced 18 medal recipients days ahead of St. Josemaría’s feast day, June 26.
On June 18, 2025, Anthony, 44, and Shoenecker, 50, jumped into the low-temperature waters of Rattlesnake Falls, in the remote North Fork of the American River, to try to save a fellow numerary, Valentino Creus, but none of the three surfaced.
A private diver, specializing in recovering those who have drowned, found their bodies four days later, 47 feet below the surface. Others who were with the three saw the two Matthews immediately enter the water when they saw Creus, 59, struggling with the cold and powerful current.
Family and friends proud, grief-stricken
On learning of the award, Noel Blaszczyk called herself “a very proud sister” of her younger brother Shoenecker.
“But also just overwhelmed with grief,” Blaszczyk wrote in a text to OSV News. “We are all grief-stricken, especially at the one year mark. It’s been very difficult.”
She wrote, “The medal honors what Matthew did in his final moments, but those of us who knew him believe he was living that kind of courage and generosity his entire life.”
“They had dedicated their whole life to the service of others, and they were living for God and for others, and it just was second nature. It just was the most natural thing for them to go in and help (Creus),” said John, who was with the group that went on the hike. He asked that only his first name be used. The men had been his friends for decades.
“It’s natural that all of us people who work are called to give glory to God, by working with love of God and in the service of others, and with the greatest perfection that we can,” he said. “And so I turned to Matt Anthony as my helper in that area. I ask for his intercession because we all have things that we can improve in and I’ve encouraged people over the past year, especially those who know these three guys, to go to them (in prayer).”
John clarified this is a private devotion to his friends.
He described Anthony as a “loud, boisterous and intense guy” who “managed to combine that with … his refinement in dealing with people, in this way of being very classy.” He said Shoenecker lived “the best version of himself” and worked in an Opus Dei center “getting classes and spiritual help to people” and where it was “not at all uncommon to just notice that he was in the chapel a few minutes here and there, talking to our Lord.” He remembered Creus as “a small guy, but nothing could contain his love and his care for people.”
Opus Dei members recall men as “scholars of virtue”
Opus Dei numeraries are single, celibate laypeople who live in community. The majority of the personal prelature’s 94,000 members worldwide are married (74%) and called supernumeraries. Several thousand are priests, either incardinated in the personal prelature or their local dioceses with an affiliation to Opus Dei. Members strive to make prayer, daily Mass, sacramental confession, Scripture meditation and other devotions part of their lives.
“They’re laypeople, but with a commitment to live in the world, love the world, but also be apostles right there in the world,” explained Msgr. Thomas Bohlin, Opus Dei vicar of the U.S. and Canada.
He said Anthony and Shoenecker were teachers and mentors of boys and men helping them to live out their faith as sons, fathers and brothers. Both traveled to do this and spent the last years of their lives in Opus Dei’s U.S. headquarters in New York working closely with Msgr. Bohlin. Anthony did evangelization with young adults out of Opus Dei headquarters in Rome for five years before going to New York.
Msgr. Bohlin said the two men receiving the Carnegie Medal is “a great honor” and “it recognizes that they just gave themselves without thinking, to help a friend.”
“So they’d already had this deep personal commitment to laying down their lives for others, laying down their lives for the church. And they were both incredibly admirable, admirable men,” he added.
William Bowman, a supernumerary who met Anthony and Shoenecker, said he has spent the past year since their death praying about their virtues “and it has really helped me a lot.”
Bowman, 77, told OSV News he owns a consulting firm which specializes in helping companies to tap their most prominent virtues.
He called Anthony, Shoenecker and Creus “scholars of virtue” who specialized in “so many” virtues including “fidelity, generosity, magnanimity, courage and, of course, love.”
He said, “So these gentlemen … gave their lives for each other, demonstrating that there is something else that’s rooted in God. And it’s just been a great indicator of the kind of life that we want to live, because we get to heaven by living the virtues heroically.”
“Their teaching continues from heaven, and they have so much to say,” Bowman said.
Simone Orendain is an OSV News correspondent. She writes from Chicago.
