A Manhattan police lieutenant will receive the Medal of Valor, one of the NYPD’s highest awards – nearly a century after his granddad took home the same medal as a gutsy rookie.
Lt. Daniel O’Keefe, 41, who Wednesday will be honored for his bravery during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, keeps a small photo of his late grandfather, Lt. Edward Quinn, tucked inside his police hat.
In 1905, the young Quinn was chasing a robbery suspect when the crook shot him in the leg. Quinn wouldn’t give up.
Bleeding and limping, he kept up the pursuit – and nabbed him with the help of the driver of a horse-drawn carriage who positioned it to block the fleeing thief’s path.
Quinn’s actions that day won him what was then called the Medal of Bravery in 1906. Now called the Medal of Valor, it’s the NYPD’s third highest honor.
Quinn retired in 1952 after a record 46 years on the force and passed away in 1978 at age 96.
“I was very proud of my grandfather, and I wanted to follow in his footsteps,” said O’Keefe, noting that his mother, Eleanor, 87, “is so proud that her father and son now have the same award.”
O’Keefe, then a sergeant, was in the World Trade Center’s north tower helping people get out of the building on 9/11 when he was trapped in a fifth-floor hallway by flying debris from the collapse of the south tower.
Rescuers dug him out, and the father of two fled the tower less than a minute before it, too, fell.
“Lt. Daniel O’Keefe is a shining example of a great police department and a great family tradition,” said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
O’Keefe will be saluted at a Medal Day ceremony along with 31 other hero cops – including two undercover detectives slain on Staten Island last year in a failed gun sting.
Detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews will posthumously be given the Medal of Honor, the department’s highest award.