was wounded 11 times. Biaggi received dozens of citations for valor, including the police department’s Medal of Honor (its highest award) and the National Police Officers Association of America’s Medal of Valor, becoming one of the NYPD's most decorated officers. Among his many exploits was his rescue in 1946 on Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan of a girl on a runaway horse, which dragged him 90 feet and trampled his right leg before he subdued it, causing a permanent limp. He used a cane for the rest of his life. In 1944, he shot and killed a man who tried to stab him with an ice pick, and in 1959, he shot and killed a man who tried to rob him at gunpoint; he himself was wounded in the shootout in the Bronx. In 1952, he was promoted to Sergeant. He retired from the Department in 1965, with the rank of Detective Lieutenant. Legal career At the age of 45 and near the end of his police career, Biaggi entered law school. The American Bar Association granted him a special dispensation to study law due to his distinguished police career, even though Biaggi had never gone to college and a college degree was a prerequisite for law school. Dean Daniel Gutman offered him a full scholarship to New York Law School, after hearing him speak at a public event. In 1965, he graduated from the law school with an LLB. In 1966, at the age of 49, he was admitted to the New York State Bar and founded the law firm Biaggi & Ehrlich. He represented a Queens woman who was denied the right to be an umpire in minor league baseball in 1969, and won her case at the New York Court of Appeals in 1972. U.S. House of Representatives In 1968, the U.S. House seat in became vacant when eight-term Republican incumbent Paul A. Fino resigned to become a justice on the New York Supreme Court. Biaggi ran for the open seat as a Democrat with the endorsement of the Conservative Party. He won the 1968 election to Congress with 60.5% of the vote in what had previously been considered a traditional Bronx Republican stronghold. He was 51 years old. Author Gerhard Falk wrote: "Few members of the House of Representatives have ever achieved the popularity of Mario Biaggi." He was easily re-elected in 1970, as a nominee of