RIDGEFIELD — Kobee Nelson was sitting in the last row of the bus home from Ridgefield High School on Nov. 10, when the junior noticed a younger student sitting across the aisle fidgeting with the window.
Soon enough, the window was open and the student was sticking his entire arm outside the bus and coming dangerously close to trees and cars. One of Nelson’s friends who was sitting in front of the other student told him to stop, but he didn’t. Nelson, 16, left his seat and sat down next to the other student and forcibly tried to get him to stop.
“He mounted his legs up on the side of the bus and tried to back me out into the aisle,” Nelson said.
Still, Nelson kept trying, and at the bus’s next stop, he walked up to the bus driver and told her what was going on. He suggested the other student should sit in a more supervised seat on the bus.
The other student followed him up front, and when he heard what was going on, he yelled a slur at Nelson.
“I told him, ‘I’d much rather you hurt me than yourself,'” Nelson said. “He could’ve broken an arm or lost fingers.”
Nelson doesn’t know the other student too well. He’s a passing acquaintance, if that. Nelson just didn’t want to see him get hurt. The other student spent the rest of the bus ride up front near the driver and hasn’t been on the bus much since. After the incident, they did run into each other in the hall, and the student thanked Nelson for looking out for him.
“I think his parents had to explain how dangerous that was for him to really understand what was going on,” Nelson said.
After the bus ride that day, the driver asked her supervisor to review the footage. When Shannon Barnett, director of transportation with KWRL Transportation Cooperative, saw what Nelson did, he wanted to honor the student.
He gave him the KWRL Hero Award for Honorable Stewardship, a program Barnett started about three years ago when he took over as director. The award is given out whenever Barnett thinks someone has earned one, he said, adding he gave out six or seven last school year. Nelson made history by earning the award.
“This is the first time we’ve given it to a student,” Barnett said. “Usually, we give to drivers for operating above and beyond the call of duty.”
Barnett said Nelson was looking out for his fellow student to a degree a lot of people wouldn’t.
“When I saw the extraordinary efforts of this student, I thought I had to honor him in a way,” Barnett said.
For Nelson, it was a nice surprise to get the award, but not something he was expecting.
“It’s a small thing to help someone,” he said. “It’s easy.”
