Who’s the living Armenian you would call an exceptional person?

Monte Melkonian

I’d go with [Shavarsh Karapetyan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcdD7f8f2p4), a legendary Soviet Armenian finswimmer.

In 1976, after a training session, he heard a trolleybus crash off a dam into a reservoir. It sank about 25 meters offshore at a depth of 10 meters, in sewage-filled water with almost zero visibility. He dove down 20 times (around 25 seconds each), kicked open the back window, and helped rescue 46 of the 92 passengers onboard. Twenty of them survived.

He contracted severe pneumonia and sepsis, was hospitalized for 45 days, and it essentially ended his athletic career.

And this wasn’t even the first time, he stopped a bus from rolling into a mountain gorge by breaking into the driver’s compartment and steering it away from the cliff 2 years prior.

He’s 72 now, alive and healthy. Saving 20 lives… that’s a legacy most people couldn’t even dream of. Absolute respect.