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 three-hour drive from an Opus Dei center to take a nearly four-hour hike to Rattlesnake Falls, a waterfall in the Sierra Nevada mountains in Tahoe National Forest, about 70 miles northeast of Sacramento.

Schoenecker, an outdoorsman who had previously led groups there, and another hiker jumped from a ledge about 20 feet above into a natural pool near the waterfall, splashing into water about 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Creus initially hesitated because of the height, but he, too, jumped a short time later. Through the noise of the plunging water, the others heard Creus’ cries for help. Schoenecker immediately returned to the ledge and jumped in to try to help Creus.

Anthony, who hadn’t planned to go into the water, took off his shoes and jumped in after Schoenecker.

None of the other hikers saw the three men again. Three days later, Juan Heredia, a volunteer diver from Stockton, California, recovered the bodies, about 45 feet down.

It’s not clear what happened, although observers believe the cold water and the swift current probably played a role.

Four days after the one-year anniversary of the triple drowning, the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission announced Monday that Schoenecker and Anthony have been awarded the Carnegie Medal, which the commission gives “to those who risk death or serious physical injury to an extraordinary degree while saving or attempting to save the lives of others.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), the founder of Carnegie Steel and later a philanthropist, established the fund in 1904 to honor two men who died after entering a collapsed mine near Pittsburgh to try to save trapped miners. The commission describes the Carnegie Medal as “the nation’s highest award for heroism by a civilian.”

“It Was Heroic”

The Register spoke on Monday with relatives of the three men.

Matthew Anthony, who lived at Opus Dei’s Murray Hill Center in New York City and oversaw men’s apostolic activities in the United States and Canada, grew up north of St. Louis. He studied classics at Notre Dame and later pursued graduate studies in the field, and he liked to read the New Testament in Greek every day.

In recent years, after his mother, Susan Anthony, died in 2022, Matt and his dad, Paul Anthony, 76, would translate Latin together, including Cicero and St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae.

“Particularly after Susan died, that was what I would live for — talking to him,” Paul Anthony told the Register.

Paul described his son as quick and a hard worker.

“He was very good at just picking up things. He was organized and diligent,” Paul Anthony said. “In high school, we’d have to tell him to go to bed at 1 o’clock in the morning, because he’d still be studying.”

He said Matt adapted to his leadership role in Opus Dei easily.

“He really matured very quickly in terms of his decision-making and leadership skills,” Paul Anthony said. “He was bright, and he studied, and he could absorb things very quickly.”

He said he marvels at Matt’s quick decision to jump into the water after his friends, without knowing what would come next.

“It was heroic. I don’t know that I would have had the courage to do it,” Paul Anthony said.

Anthony served on the board of Sparhawk Academy, an Opus Dei boys’ school in Millis, Massachusetts, which this past May gave its first Matthew Anthony Courage Award to Heredia, the diver who recovered the bodies of the three men.

“He Was Completely Selfless”

Matthew Schoenecker, who grew up near Milwaukee, earned a doctorate in biomedical engineering before becoming director of an Opus Dei center in Los Angeles. He later moved to New York to join Opus Dei’s leadership.

His sister, Noel Blaszczyk, 56, with occasional emotion in her voice, described Schoenecker as an athlete and fitness aficionado, as well as a daredevil whose hobbies included cliff diving.

He was also easy to talk to and a natural entertainer, she said.

“He was so genuine. And he had such an incredible sense of humor. He could tell a joke like no other. Straight face. He would have the entire room laughing,” Blaszczyk said.

During family visits as an adult, Schoenecker would often make time to pray, which Blaszczyk described as “the center of his life.” She said her brother frequently advised her to go to Mass and confession, practices she said she has performed more frequently since he died.

“It’s because of Matthew that I’ve gotten closer to my faith. And it’s helped get me through this grief, on days when I didn’t think I was going to get through it,” Blaszczyk said.

She said her brother’s last act — trying to save a friend — fit his character.

“Him jumping in to try to save somebody doesn’t surprise me at all. He was completely selfless,” Blaszczyk said.

Together, With Jesus

Blaszczyk described Schoenecker as not just her younger brother but also her best friend. He was close to her two sons, now ages 25 and 24. One of them, Jacob, an artist, created an image of the three men at the waterfall meeting Jesus.

That fits the image that Lourdes Creus has of the three men.

Lourdes, whose brother Val’s cries for help drew Anthony and Schoenecker into the water, last year described her brother to the Register as cheerful, funny and wise, as did others who knew him. Val, a partner in an accounting firm, lived at an Opus Dei center in Los Angeles, where he mentored college students and provided spiritual direction for married men.

On Monday, Lourdes told the Register that she is inspired by the courage and generosity of Anthony and Schoenecker, as well as by her brother’s constant encouragement to her before he died. She also said she has been trying to do more to practice her faith during the past year.

“I actually find myself going to Mass more often, and reading the Bible more often,” Creus said. “I imagine that I meet my brother there, and the two Matts.”