Guest list

WASHINGTON-At the State of the Union address tonight, first lady Michelle Obama will be sitting in the gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives with Daniel Hernandez, the congressional intern who is credited with saving the life of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., after she was shot Jan. 8. Hernandez staunched Giffords' head wound and held her up so she wouldn't choke on her blood while waiting for emergency personnel to arrive. Today is Hernandez's 21st birthday.

The White House invited others touched by the Tucson tragedy, including John and Roxanna Green and their son Dallas, the family of 9-year-old Christina Green, who was one of the six killed. Dr. Peter Rhee will be there, too, the surgeon who helped oversee Giffords' remarkable progress in the weeks following the shooting. Rhee dealt with hundreds of battlefield injuries in two military deployments since 2001, first to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. In the packed chamber, filled with members of the House, Senate, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Supreme Court, one seat will remain empty for Giffords.

The guests of the White House for the president's speech all have stories: Some are heroes, some are good students, and some are props for Obama's policy proposals. Most are average U.S. citizens, without title or power.

Army Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta of Hiawatha, Iowa, will be among the White House guests. Giunta, 25, is the only man living to have received the Medal of Honor since the Vietnam War. When insurgents ambushed his unit in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley in 2007, Giunta ran into enemy fire and pulled his wounded comrades to safety. Then he charged and shot two insurgents who were trying to carry off another wounded American, Sgt. Joshua Brennan, who died later that night. Giunta has shunned the attention the award brought him. "I have never given everything," he said in a 60 Minutes interview last year. "Sgt. Joshua Brennan gave everything."

Other State of the Union guests helped with a different rescue: the extraction of the 33 Chilean miners from 2,050 feet underground. Brandon and Julie Fisher of Berlin, Pa., own Center Rock, which manufactured innovative drill bits that allowed the Chilean rescuers to tear through the rock faster to reach the miners, who had been underground 68 days when a tiny capsule went through the 28-inch shaft to bring them to the surface. The couple spent more than a month in Chile to guide the drilling.

The White House also invited some teenage guests. Amy Chyao, 16, has developed an innovative cancer treatment, a photosensitizer for photodynamic therapy that uses light to activate drugs that kill cancer cells. Cancer researchers have inquired of Chyao and her teacher about implementing the treatment. Another, Brandon Ford, 18, designed a fuel-efficient car that made it to the final round in an international contest that included entries from auto companies and universities.

The president also invited small business owners who benefited from the stimulus and a brain cancer patient who has benefited from healthcare reform.

House Speaker John Boehner invited guests too, like Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., who was at the forefront of fighting for religious freedom in the face of legalized same-sex marriage in the district. Catholic Charities, which is under the church's oversight, wanted freedom to continue to provide adoptions only to heterosexual couples, for example.

Wuerl also supported the local school voucher program for low-income students, which the Obama administration closed to new students in 2009. Boehner plans to introduce a bill Wednesday with Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., that would reopen the voucher program, and he invited a number of D.C.'s voucher advocates and students who are in the program currently to the president's address. Education is an issue close to Boehner's heart: He was one of the chief architects of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act