Trafalgar Police Officer Dustin Moody, front row, second from right, was recently given a $10,000 grant from Running 4 Heroes, a non-profit that donates grant awards to first responders who have been hurt in the line of duty.
Photo provided by Running 4 Heroes
A Trafalgar police officer paralyzed from a crash last summer received a special surprise earlier this week.
Officials from Running 4 Heroes, a Florida-based nonprofit whose mission is to raise awareness and funds for those fallen and hurt in the line of duty, awarded Dustin Moody their $10,000 Injured First Responder Grant Sunday. Moody was presented the grant at the Trafalgar Police Department surrounded by his family, local law enforcement and members of the nonprofit.
Moody was injured and left paralyzed from the waist down last June when he go into a car crash while pursuing an impaired driver in Trafalgar. He went through months of rehabilitation in Chicago last year and returned home to his wife, Emily, and two young children in December.
Recipients for the Injured First Responder Grant are chosen from applications submitted to Running 4 Heroes. Moody’s application was submitted several months ago, and they selected him as the May recipient of the grant, which can be used to help him and his family in any way they see fit, said Chad Cartledge, co-founder and CEO.
“All we care about is that it serves as a blessing to them and their families,” he said.
This past weekend, Moody became their 46th Injured First Responder Grant recipient, and they have now given out over $400,000 to injured first responders, Cartledge said.
Running 4 Heroes was founded in 2019 by Cartledge’s son, Zechariah, then 10. His son wanted to run one mile for every first responder who makes the ultimate sacrifice in the line of duty as a way to honor them, Chad Cartledge said.
Support for the efforts grew rapidly, and by 2020, they expanded their reach to include helping financially support injured first responders. They’ve also added additional youth runners, including Morgan, of New Jersey, who ran a mile this weekend along State Road 252 in Trafalgar and presented Moody with his grant at the Trafalgar Town Hall.
“With Morgan’s mile that she did this past weekend in Indiana, that was also our 1,522nd mile that we’ve conducted for our fallen first responders since my son ran his first mile back in January of 2019,” Cartledge said.
Moody thanked the nonprofit and Morgan for running for fallen officers, and also thanked the organization for all they’ve done, he said in a video posted by Running 4 Heroes Sunday.
“You don’t really understand completely what it means like this until you’re the one involved in it — and truly what all the trials and tribulations that you would go through,” Moody said. “But this will go a long way in helping that with my family and other needs that have arose from the rest of this situation, so I want to say thank you.”
Cartledge said the nonprofit was pleased to be able to help Moody and his family.
“You could tell this was a blessing to him and his family,” he said.
