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JOHN STANMEYER / VII FOR TIME
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ERWIN AND JACK
INDONESIA
After the Cheers
Like many other Indonesians, Erwin has only one name. But he has been many things. He is unemployed, but before Dec. 26, 2004, he was a flower seller. Then the tsunami hit the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh, and for a moment Erwin became a hero. Trapped with hundreds of people seeking higher ground, he stood on the city's humpback bridge. Below him were thundering waves. "I stood there, staring helplessly at black water that looked more like heavy mud," he recalls. "It was filled with corpses, cars, dead animals and rubble from destroyed houses." Then he heard a sound--"Papa ..."--and saw a girl of about 3 clinging to a wooden plank. "It was terrible," he says. "There were so many men on the bridge, but nobody made a move. I realized then that nobody was going to help, so I ran to the river bank and waded into the water."
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Struggling through debris for nearly 15 minutes, he reached the girl but was exhausted. "I yelled to the men on the bridge to come down because I was getting tired, but again, no one moved." Except for Heru (Jack) Kurniawan, 27, who saw Erwin struggling to get back to the riverbank. "It was obvious that someone had to do something or both of them would drown," he says. Handing his cell phone to a friend, Jack waded in and, "trying to avoid the dead bodies," paddled over to Erwin and the girl. When he lifted her onto his shoulder, she screamed in pain, and the men realized her foot was caught in a fishing net. It seemed to take an eternity to untangle her.
Near collapse, Erwin and the little girl were taken to a military hospital. He never saw her again. Later, Erwin discovered that his youngest son, 5, had perished in the tsunami. "I'm still haunted by the loss of my boy," he says. Meanwhile, Jack has lost his job too and can no longer afford to own a cell phone. Erwin is studying English to improve his chances of getting a job with an aid agency, but he isn't optimistic. "I do realize that I have to move on. But moving on is hard when you're not sure what the future is." Alas, heroism is sometimes its only reward.