Thirty-seven years ago, Winston Donnovan Quest was among a group of students who stood between an angry machete-wielding mob and a man who was to later become one of Jamaica’s prime ministers, preventing anyone from harming him.

Back then, their act of bravery may not have seemed like anything more than youthful exuberance.

But little did Quest know that last August when he raced down a cliff to the sea to rescue three adults and an infant trapped in a car which had careened off the road, his many years of good deeds and acts of bravery would finally be given recognition.

Next Monday – National Heroes’ Day – the 50-year-old Quest, who lives in Black River, St Elizabeth, will walk proudly to the dais to receive the Badge of Honour for Gallantry.

Having lived by the motto “If I can help someone as I journey along, my living would not be in vain”, the businessman said the August rescue was only one of the good deeds he has done and continues to do.

Recalling the act of gallantry that won him the award, Quest said he and his friend BB Rickets were travelling towards Montego Bay from St Ann where they had gone to conduct business.

“My friend was saying, ‘look how much money we spend to come here and we don’t get through with the business,’ and to make matters worse, he was stopped by the police,” Quest recalled.

But he believes God was controlling the hands of time, as shortly after they left the police check point and were in the vicinity of the Dry Harbour in Discovery Bay, they heard a bang.

Quest, who was in the passenger seat, said he looked around just in time to see a car careening over the precipice.

Without hesitating, he raced down the cliff, wading into the sea to rescue the screaming passengers.

The adults, he said, were hanging onto the doors of the car which had nose-dived into the ocean and was quickly sinking.

“The father was holding onto the baby but every time he tried to swim out the baby was going under and she was crying and they were crying for help,” he reminisced.

He said that with the assistance of another man, he was able to get them out of the car only minutes before it sank to the bottom of the sea.

“By the time we assisted everyone the car was fully submerged,” he said.

Quest – his clothes soaking wet – placed the dazed passengers in his vehicle and rushed them to hospital. Not only did he stay to see them settled in, but he exchanged numbers so he could be kept abreast of their recovery.

So touched were the couple by this gesture that they asked Quest and his wife Jacinta to be godparents to the baby.

If he had to do it again, the grandfather of four said he would “in a heartbeat, because some people are born for this”.

That must be true in Quest’s case, as in 1972 he and fellow students prevented a young politician by the name of PJ Patterson from being attacked by an angry mob.

Patterson, he said, was in a Westmoreland community at the same time that a Jamaica Labour Party motorcade was passing through.

“I was the first one at the car door and I took a machete and told them (the mob) they had to kill me first,” Quest recalled.

Hortense Evans, then principal of New Hope All-Age in Culloden, Whitehouse, Westmoreland, where Quest was a student, said she was told by the teachers how Quest and the other children shielded Patterson, who later became Jamaica’s longest-serving prime minister, having held the office from 1992 to 2006.

“The story is that when the police threatened to fire shots, Quest opened his shirt and say shoot me,” she recalled, adding that he was only a boy then.

“I heard Mr Patterson spoke about the incident years later at a function that when he was passing through the valley of death the children of New Hope stood beside him,” Evans said.

She emphasised that Quest was very deserving of the national honour because “he is normally that type of helpful person.”

It was this instinct to protect that influenced Quest to join the Jamaica Constabulary Force in 1975, an organisation he served in until 1992.

“My entire life is like a protector and since then it has always been about protecting people,” he said with a smile.

And he seemed to have summed it up well, since only a few months after saving the passengers in the ill-fated car, he was again put in the position to help two other victims of a motor vehicle crash.

His wife Jacinta explained that they were travelling along Spur Tree when they saw the wreck.

“A lot of people were passing and not stopping, although the man was pinned inside the vehicle and bleeding and the woman was going in and out of consciousness,” she said.

Quest said they immediately called the police, fire department and the ambulance and helped to free the injured persons.

The couple is, however, disturbed that the ambulance left the scene without transporting the injured persons, resulting in the police taking the badly injured man in the back of a pick-up to hospital.

Asked how he feels about this award which will be bestowed upon him, Quest said it was an encouragement for him to continue to do good.

“When I got the letter from OPM (Office of the Prime Minister) I say, good seed sow will reap good fruit,” he said with a chuckle.

Jacinta, who is one of his biggest fans, said she did not realise the magnitude of what he had done until she actually saw the embankment down which he had climbed to rescue the family.

She is, however, grateful that her husband is being recognised for his good deeds before he is dead.

“This is just Donnovan’s way of life because he is always helping people in need,” she said.

The couple has yet another interesting story to tell as Jacinta said a woman whose life Quest had saved when gunmen held her up years ago, found his home and came to visit just two days before she died.

“She came to the house to look for him and when he came home she hugged him as if this was something she had to do before she died,” Jacinta said.

First in a series of articles telling the stories of Jamaicans who will next Monday receive the Badge of Honour for Gallantry at the National

Honours and Awards ceremony.