PITTSBURGH — Brenda Posey said the stunned look on her son’s face sent her dashing to a frozen lake to pull his friend from the icy water.

“He said, in a state of shock, `I guess my friend’s dead,’ ” Posey said, adding that she initially didn’t understand what he meant. “He said, `Rene’s in the water.’ That’s when it sunk in and I was gone.”

Ms. Posey, a 31-year-old silk-screen printer from Hamilton, Ontario, was one of 21 people honored for bravery Wednesday by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission of Pittsburgh.

The commission recognizes ordinary people who place themselves at risk to help others. It has honored 7,787 people in the United States and Canada since being founded by industrialist Andrew Carnegie in 1904.

Among the others honored were E. Vance Bunker, 50, Richard C. Kohls, 32, and Paul E. Murray, 40, all of Matinicus Island, Maine, who saved two men on a sinking tugboat in the Atlantic Ocean on Jan. 16, 1992.

As Ms. Posey tried to pull 7-year-old Rene Jouvence from Lake Ontario in February, she fell into the frigid lake.

Her boyfriend came running to the shore to help, followed by neighbors with a ladder. The group worked first to get the boy on the ladder and out of the water, then to pull Ms. Posey from the lake.

“We had to get him out first, because he was just a little kid,” Ms. Posey said. “I figured I could climb the ladder like nothing.”

The boy was pulled from the lake and then Ms. Posey tried to climb the ladder, but managed to mount only one rung. Her wet body and clothes kept her from moving once she emerged from the water. “I think I just froze,” she said.

Her boyfriend and neighbors pulled the entire ladder from the lake. Both Ms. Posey and Rene were hospitalized for hypothermia.

Ms. Posey said the rescue helped her get to know neighbors with whom she had only a passing acquaintance.