Detroit Free Press -- Seeing the injured Iraqi woman -- arms raised and begging for help -- along a roadside Saturday, the young Army lieutenant from Rochester Hills jumped from his armored vehicle to her side.

Seconds later, as Adam Malson and an Iraqi translator crouched beside the woman, a suicide bomber swiftly descended, killing the men instantly. The woman, who had been on her way to a mosque near Baghdad when she was injured by a previous attack, survived.

Today, the Malson family is consoling each other as they try to comprehend the loss of the 23-year-old soldier they describe as an all-American kid with a soft spot for the downtrodden.

"I really think his compassion overcame him," his father, Ben Malson, said Sunday. "He didn't have to do that. He did what he felt was right. I think she must have felt comfort knowing that there was an American soldier over you, telling you everything's OK."

Adam Malson was among more than 90 people killed during two days of carnage in Iraq during the weekend. On Saturday, 55 were killed in attacks and suicide bombings by insurgents. The day before, 36 died and dozens of others were wounded.

He was the 43rd soldier with known ties to Michigan to be killed in Iraq since the war began.

Malson, whose wife, Lindsey, 24, is also a member of the 10th Mountain Division, was set to return home from Iraq in four months. His family has not yet made funeral arrangements, pending the return of his body.

They said the popular Rochester High School football standout died doing what he believed in.

"He always made sure no one was being picked on in school. He was always the first one to interfere if someone was bullying someone," Ben Malson said. "Is he a hero? I don't know. Did he do the right thing? I think he did."

Growing up in Rochester Hills, Adam Malson "wanted to help dad all the time, whether I was working on the car or painting the house. I always gave him a paintbrush or a wrench," his father said.

The Malson children -- Amy, 25, Adam, and David, 19 -- attended elementary school a stone's throw from their house, and their father said he "used to stand up in the bedroom and watch my kids walk to school."

Even then, Ben Malson said, Adam excelled in sports and academics, earning several honors for football, wrestling and track and graduating from Michigan State University in 2003 with a grade point average just shy of 4.0.

In college, Malson was drawn to the Reserve Officers Training Corps, or ROTC, and to his future wife, who was also a member. It was her father, former Army Sgt. Bob Loesh, who pinned Malson's first bars when they were commissioned to the Army on graduation day. The couple, who were stationed in Watertown, N.Y., would have celebrated their third anniversary in May.

Courageous and driven, Malson learned last week he had been invited to try out for the elite Ranger Force when he finished his current deployment. His family was proud of him, though they still called him by his childhood nickname, Babba, which he earned as an insistent 2-year-old demanding his bottle.

Ben Malson, who always marked his son's phone calls in his calendar, kept an e-mail file called Lt. Babba. Its last entry came Thursday, just before Adam Malson called home from a pay phone.

"Thank God I could say 'I love you' two days before he died. That's some sort of closure," Ben Malson said. "But I would have given up my life to have my son continue his life. I would reverse this in a minute. It's hard to bury a 23-year-old boy who's got his whole life ahead of him."