"My son has always considered me a hero," policeman Li Guolin told Wuhan Evening News yesterday.

"I am rather proud of that."

True to his son's expectations, Li has become a savior for students, teachers and quake victims at Beichuan Middle School.

Li's 15-year-old son was trapped together with other schoolmates beneath the rubble of the collapsed school after Monday's quake, but the cop decided that those in greater danger than his child needed to be rescued first.

"I asked the rescuers to start from the ones who were easier to recover than my son," the 43-year-old Li said, holding back his tears.

His call saved many lives, but his own son did not survive.

Beichuan county is one of the hardest-hit areas in the deadly quake that struck Sichuan province.

Li said he was in a work conference in his office on the fourth floor when the quake struck on Monday.

Together with seven others in the meeting, Li started leaving the building.

But it collapsed before they could get out, burying the group under twisted steel and slabs of concrete.

Drawing on his survival training he learned when he was a soldier, Li managed to protect his head and hid in the corner of a toilet.

He suffered injuries on his head, hands and ears. He started looking for people and found only three colleagues alive, heavily injured.

Their three-story office building was destroyed.

It suddenly occurred to Li then that his son, Liwang Ziguo, was still at school.

When he finally made it to his son's school, he first saw students crying at the playground.

The five-story building was reduced to three-stories. The first and second levels had caved in.

"Liwang Ziguo! Where are you?" the policeman cried out.

"Dad! I am here, come and get me!" the boy answered.

Li managed to find out his son's position among the debris.

But without rescue equipment, Li and other rescuers could only dig at the rubble with their bare hands.

Li's son lay more than 10 m beneath the rubble, his left leg pinned by several concrete slabs.

At that point, there was still hope of saving the boy's life if Li started digging him out.

But other quake survivors lay under the debris and were easier to reach.

Liwang Ziguo's cries for help faded as noon approached on Tuesday.

The boy had stopped breathing when he was finally dug out early Wednesday morning.

His heroic father had rescued more than 30 people.

(China Daily 05/16/2008 page3)