In January 2010, Master Sergeant Keith O’Grady led a five-man team of three other Pararescuemen and one Medical Technician into the earthquake devastated country of Haiti. His team was part of the first group of United States military responders to arrive on the island just 26 hours after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck.

Sergeant O’Grady’s squad spent the first 36 hours after their arrival searching relentlessly around Port-au-Prince, with little rest and no sleep. Sergeant O’Grady then initiated a relationship with the Fairfax County Virginia Urban Search and Rescue Team, the premier civilian rescue force on the ground. For eight days, Sergeant O’Grady and his expanded team worked in concert to extricate earthquake victims from the rubble. Some of the operations lasted over 30 hours, with victims heavily entombed within collapsed concrete structures. Sergeant O’Grady and his team regularly risked their lives by crawling for miles with concrete breakers, digging bars, and their bare hands to reach stranded victims. The tunnels in which they operated were extremely dangerous, susceptible to secondary collapse from both undermining and recurring aftershocks.

Sergeant O’Grady’s team is credited with 13 technical rescues of people buried alive under tons of rubble, advanced medical care of 27 patients, and the transfer of 18 patients to trauma centers. The last individual the team rescued, they actually saved twice—first by extricating her from a collapsed university building, then by forcefully navigating through gridlocked traffic to transport her to an Israeli field hospital.

For his heroic actions, Master Sergeant O’Grady was nominated for an Airman’s Medal and earned the Humanitarian Service Medal.