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.
Vice President Joe Biden made Demby the centerpiece of his speech at CU during the White House’s Week of Action campaign during Sexual Assault Awareness Month in early April.
Demby was walking on campus when he heard a woman’s 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.
“It began and ended before I could even comprehend what was happening,” said Demby, who graduated from Montezuma-Cortez High School.
During Biden’s speech, the vice president brought Demby to the lectern and praised his courage.
“It’s not so easy ... he prevented a sexual assault. Max is a hero. Like my son Beau, who just passed away ... when he was a sophomore at Penn, did the same thing,” Biden said.
The CU-Boulder Police Department stated that the “event would have ended much worse than it did.”
Demby, a fifth-year concurrent accounting student, disagreed.
“I guess I don’t think of myself as a hero as much as someone who did the right thing,” he told USA Today College. “Not 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.”
“Every guy has a woman in their life they care about,” Demby told USA Today College. “As soon as you realize that sexual assault could happen to a loved one, like a sister or girlfriend or someone’s mother, it hits a lot closer to home. I think that would be the way I would try to involve men on campuses nationwide.”
Demby was awarded the Vice Presidential Coin of Courage.
It happened after Demby, CU Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), the student government’s tri-executives and basketball player Josh Scott greeted the vice president.
Biden gave Demby a hug and the coin.
“The tradition is that if someone gives you one of these coins, only the president and vice president have them,” said Demby, who added there are string attached. “If I should ever meet him again and I have it with me, drinks are on him. If I don’t, drinks are on me.”
Demby is an unusual student athlete. He’s one of the students who run alongside the CU mascot during football games. They’re known as the “Ralphie Runners.”
