DALTON, Ga. — All three of the Dalton Police Department officers honored with the department’s Life Saving Award all said they aren’t heroes. They were just trying to help and doing their jobs.

The award is given to officers who give emergency medical care or perform other heroic acts during the course of their duties, according to the DPD.

The three — officers Jacob Allen, Michael Bowen and Justin Smith — were honored Tuesday at the monthly Public Safety Commission meeting along with former officer Andrew Sell for their actions in recent incidents. Sell and Smith made sure an elderly woman safely escaped an apartment fire on Jan. 20, and Allen and Bowen’s actions on Jan. 26 helped save the life of a woman who had attempted to kill herself.

“You just come in and treat every day as if it is a new day,” Smith said. “Whatever comes our way, you just take it and do what you need to do.”

For Sell and Smith, doing what needed to be doing was just a matter of trying to get people out of the way so firefighters could do their job. The officers were the first emergency responders to arrive at an apartment fire on Avenue F.

“We showed up and several people were already outside and the top apartments were starting to fill with smoke,” Smith said. “Before the firefighters showed up, we were talking to the people outside asking if everyone had made it out, and a guy said he thought his elderly mother might still be upstairs.”

When Sell and Smith went upstairs, the apartment across from the lady’s apartment was on fire and her door was open, allowing the smoke to come into her home.

“You just do what you have to do,” said Smith, who is his second year on the force after spending three years with the Walker County jail. “We just assisted her out and helped her as best we could. I don’t think that she realized how much her apartment was filling up with smoke, but we got her out safely and she was alright.”

For Allen and Bowen, they responded to a situation where the threat wasn’t to another person, but was self-inflicted. After learning of a woman’s suicidal threats, neighbors were worried about the safety of the woman.

According to an incident report, Allen and Bowen tried to reach out to the woman, screaming through the door. But after not getting a response, Allen kicked the door in and they found the woman laying on a couch with blood coming from her wrist and several knives on the floor. Bowen put a pair of gloves on and used his hands to serve as a tourniquet on the upper arm to staunch the flow of blood until medical personnel arrived. The woman survived.

“It was shocking when we got inside,” said Allen, who has wanted to be a police officer since he was a child. “It wasn’t what I expected. Every call is a little different, but we are trained on how to act and what to do and you just fall back on that.”

Bowen, who has been on the force for 15 years and started working at the Whitfield County jail when he was 18, said it was another day on the job and downplayed his actions.

“You just do what you are called to do when you get there,” Bowen said. “She was alone, and she was at a time where she needed aid rendered. We just pretty much stopped the bleeding. Everything has its good and its bad. I just try to leave work at work and the job stays here until you come back the next day.”

In addition to the awards presented, Allen was also honored Tuesday as the department’s Traffic Safety Officer of the Year for 2018. The award is given for a combination of training, teaching and enforcing traffic laws.

“It is something that I set out to do, just to see if I could and see if I could win it,” Allen said. “I attended a lot of classes and stopped a lot of cars.”

The most satisfying part of the work, Allen said, was helping educate people on proper safety seat protocols and use.

“I have three kids myself, and that was something that I took personally and like to spread the word about,” he said.