When a man holding a gun came to the door of the St. Paul bar where Eric Wasson is a security guard, Wasson was determined not to let the man get past him.

Wasson tried to defuse the situation by smiling at the man and saying, “Hey, what’s going on?” He also told the man to calm down.

The man told Wasson to move and raised his gun, Wasson recalled.

Wasson worried about the more than 150 people inside Johnny Baby’s on University Avenue, and he rushed the man, whose gun went off twice as they struggled. No one was struck.

“God is good,” Wasson said with a smile after St. Paul Police Chief Thomas Smith presented him Wednesday with the highest award he can give a citizen, the Chief’s Award for Valor.

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Scandia: Two dead in head-on crash Thursday night “Mr. Wasson, you were indeed a hero that evening,” Smith told him about the Sept. 21 incident. Police said the gunman was convicted in federal court. “We don’t know what that suspect may have done if he was allowed inside of the bar. … You displayed a great amount of courage when you chose to disarm the suspect and protect the customers in the bar.”

Smith told Wasson’s children, ages 4 and 9, who were at the award ceremony: “Be very proud of your daddy.”

The police chief on Wednesday honored seven other citizens, all who saved strangers last year, with awards.

“Today’s theme is courage,” Smith said. “The famous writer Ernest Hemingway once said that, ‘Courage is grace under pressure.’ And my friends, when you hear the stories today, you will see that our recipients absolutely were under some pressure and put themselves in harm’s way to help complete strangers.”

Smith gave Chief’s Awards of Merit to David Christensen, Roy Cloutier and Dao Van Huynh for their rescuing a young man who was drowning in Lake Como on Oct. 24. The three didn’t know one another but worked together.

Huynh was out for a walk with relatives when he heard a faint, “Help! Help!” When he saw someone in the lake, Huynh said, “I felt like someone just hit me in the gut.”

Christensen, a medical student at the University of Minnesota, was running in the area, heard splashing and went to help.

“All three of you went into the bone-chilling water to save” the man, Smith said in presenting the awards. The man who had been in the lake was taken to a hospital to be treated for hypothermia.

Three others received Chief’s Awards for their actions June 6. Two women were standing between their parked cars when one of the cars suddenly rolled backward and pinned one of the women in between. Manteen Muhammed and LeJohn Pope heard the woman screaming for help and ran to assist. They pushed the car to free the woman, and Mark Hovorka jumped into one of the cars involved and put it in park. The woman was taken to the hospital for her injuries.

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St. Paul man threatened another man with a sword, charges say Rene Martinez, who wasn’t present Wednesday, will get a Chief’s Award for his actions on Sept. 23. He was working as a security guard when he was told a man was threatening to jump off a bridge over Interstate 94. Martinez found the distraught man on the other side of the fence on the bridge, and he held onto the man’s fingers, according to police. He talked with him and built up a rapport.

When officers arrived, it was apparent the man was more receptive to Martinez than to police, the department said. Martinez remained calm and spoke to the man for almost an hour, persuading him to come off the bridge, police said.

Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at 651-228-5262. Follow her at twitter.com/MaraGottfried.