NJ Coast Guardsman Who Saved Motorcyclist's Life Earns National Honor

BRICK, NJ — Cody Dmochowski was heading to his parents' home in Brick on a summer evening in 2025 when he heard the crash.

"Was that a motorcycle?" Dmochowski said he asked his girlfriend, Adrianna Bollaro. Realizing it was, he stopped, turned around and went back to help.

For more than an hour, Dmochowski and Bollaro helped the motorcyclist, who suffered a compound fracture and was bleeding heavily, saving his life. For his efforts, Dmochowski has been named the 2026 USO Coast Guardsman of the Year — one of seven service members nationwide recognized by the USO for extraordinary acts of bravery and service. Dmochowski and the other 2026 USO Service Members of the Year will be recognized at the annual USO Gala on April 16 in Washington, DC.

Jumping in to help is an instinct that has been instilled in him by his Coast Guard service, said Dmochowski, a yeoman second class who joined the Coast Guard in September 2019 and is a company commander at the Coast Guard's Training Center in Cape May, drilling the next generation of Coast Guard members.

Dmochowski, a 2018 graduate of Brick Township High School, was nominated for the award by command leadership in the Coast Guard, according to a USO spokesperson. The final selections are made by a USO committee.

"Genuinely, I owe the Coast Guard a lot to be prepared and have the instinct to help," Dmochowski said Thursday.

He and Bollaro were driving from her home in Jackson on July 25 home when another driver rolled through a stop sign along Leesville Road.

"We just missed her," Dmochowski said, but the motorcyclist did not. He heard the crash "right beside me."

Dmochowski, a motorcyclist himself, knew the crash was bad and turned around. He wasn't sure if the motorcyclist would be alive.

"I hear groaning and moaning from the woods," Dmochowski said. He grabbed a Coast Guard blanket from the back seat — a gift from his dad when he graduated from boot camp — and ran into the woods while telling Bollaro to call 911.

He fought through the brush to get to where the motorcyclist was lying and could see the man had a compound fracture.

"His body was off, too," Dmochowski said. The man asked him how bad the injuries were, and Dmochowski said he just worked to keep him calm and warm while first responders arrived.

"I told him not to move," because he was concerned the man had suffered a spinal injury, and then kept talking to him about motorcycles while they waited.

"I was just trying to keep him calm so his heart rate wasn't super elevated," Dmochowski said, to lessen the blood loss.

Once emergency medical technicians arrived, they took over rendering care, but they faced another issue: getting the man out of the woods. It took firefighters with chainsaws to clear a path enough to get him out, Dmochowski said.

"It was a 45-minute process," he said.

Dmochowski said Bollaro, meanwhile, saw the man's mother comment in a Facebook group about the crash and was able to connect with her privately.

After first responders took over, he said they stayed around to give witness statements to the police.

"People always want to blame the motorcyclist, assuming they are speeding," Dmochowski said, but that wasn't the case with this crash.

Afterward, they stayed in touch with the motorcyclist's mother, eventually learning that the man made a full recovery, he said.

Dmochowski said that in his role as a drill instructor, overseeing anywhere from 120 to 140 recruits in boot camp, he is trained to be on high alert at all times.

"Safety is the No. 1 priority," he said, noting they have a thick policy manual they must follow. If a recruit dislocates a knee, chokes during a meal, or loses consciousness during a training session, he has to react immediately to render aid and call in assistance.

"Everything you do you're hypervigilant," he said. "You're surrounded by emergencies. It's been so ingrained that when something happens you react."

Dmochowski, who is set to attend officer candidate school at the Coast Guard facility in New London, Connecticut, in April, said he spent 18 months after basic training in Pensacola, Florida, working on the Coast Guard Cutter Alliance, involved with drug interdiction, search and rescue missions and immigrant interdiction.

"It was really cool to be part of an organization that was continuously operating," he said.

Before he joined the Coast Guard, Dmochowski said, he does not think he would have stopped to help after a crash like the one he witnessed in July 2025.

He has been stationed in Cape May for the last 18 months as a company commander, and looks forward to continuing to give back to the agency he says has taught him so much.

"The Coast Guard has given me a lot, including that knee-jerk reaction to not be a bystander," he said. "I've gotten to pay it forward to thousands of recruits."

And he's looking forward to doing more in the years to come.