When a fellow Opus Dei member was struggling in cold water beneath a roaring waterfall last summer, Matt Schoenecker and Matt Anthony jumped in and tried to save him. All three men died.
Now, Schoenecker and Anthony have been recognized at the national level for their selflessness and bravery, posthumously receiving the Carnegie Medal for heroism.
“They deserve it for sure,” said Lourdes Creus, sister of Val Creus, the 59-year-old man Schoenecker, 50, and Anthony, 44, tried to save. “I’m forever indebted to them. I think about them all the time.”
“Who does that, what they did for my brother? It’s pretty unheard of,” she told the Register. “This was a matter of seconds. Without thinking, just because of their character.”
Tragedy at Rattlesnake Falls
As the Register reported last summer, the three men were numeraries (celibate lay members) of Opus Dei, a Catholic organization founded in 1928 by St. Josemaría Escrivá (1902-1975) to help laypeople become holy through ordinary work.
Schoenecker, Anthony and Creus were visiting an Opus Dei center in northern California last June for their three-week annual course, which numeraries typically take during the summer.
On June 18, 2025, they and several other men made an early-morning
