Young Hero In Arizona Shooting Encourages Youth At Convention

By Anna Deem in News on Feb 20, 2011 7:30PM

Although it was the worst situation possible that led him to speak at the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute annual conference, Daniel Hernandez Jr. doesn't seem to be fazed by the fact that his name is now synonymous with heroism. The University of Arizona junior has been credited with helping save his boss, U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, when she was shot in a massacre last month outside a Tucson supermarket.

On Saturday at the conference, Hernandez, 21, sat next to Sen. Dick Durbin, U.S. Rep Luis Gutierrez, and Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, but said a political career might not be his next move. "I don't know if it's political aspirations as much as a call to public service, which is one of the things that comes from what happened on Jan. 8," Hernandez said at the conference, via the Chicago Sun-Times. "I now have a platform and I'm using that to encourage a more engaged, younger populous but also a more civilized political discourse, because that's one of the things that we lack."

To the crowd of Hispanic youths that gathered to watch him speak, Hernandez shared the best advice he had ever received to them, which came from a fortune cookie he read on the day he chose to apply to college: "Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of anyone else."