Aaron Glover and Jimmy Johnson are plumbers and now celebrated heroes.
They said Wednesday they haven’t seen the boy their actions likely saved since authorities carted him to the hospital that day in late May, but they would like to meet him and wish him well.
He might be changed, Glover, 55, figures, but at least he’s alive.
That day, Glover said he went home somewhat shell-shocked only to get a call from family: His 22-year-old nephew, a military veteran, was killed in Atlanta.
The two say fate or higher power put them in the Royal Palm Beach High bathrooms at just the right time. They should’ve been there earlier, but Glover decided to visit a nagging issue at an elementary school first.
That unscheduled errand put them a little behind and just in time to hear bedlam erupt in the boys’ restroom as they worked in the girls' restroom.
They rushed in to interrupt what they soon discovered was a stabbing, which they were able to stop.
Glover and Johnson were told they were going to be publicly thanked for their quick action Tuesday.
But when they pulled into a packed parking lot at Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach, Florida, they paused.
"What did we get ourselves into?" Glover recalled saying. "I thought we were going to somebody's office or something."
They wound up center stage in front of more than 800 principals, assistant principals and administrators and the guy Glover called "the big boss," Superintendent Robert Avossa.
Glover and Johnson point out they weren’t the only ones to be thanked. There was the first school officer on the scene, a woman who immediately sought to stop the bleeding, the administrators who called 911 and the nurse who came with medical bags and the other officer who collected the other students.
Glover: “Sometimes I ask, 'What more could we have done?'”
Johnson: “Nothing.”
Glover: “We went straight to that bathroom. It was our first stop.”
Johnson: “That’s right. We were there to shut it down. We were at the right place at the right time. I’d want somebody to do the same thing for me. Like I said, we just did a good deed.”
