KMOV4 shared a touching story about a 70-year-old veteran who saved an elderly couple after their home caught on fire.
The fire broke out at around 7:30 in the morning as Marshall Helm was waiting at the bus stop with his granddaughter. As the bus pulled up, the driver opened the door and told Marshall that a house behind him was on fire.
“I looked over there and sure enough, I saw a fire coming through that window,” Marshall told KMOV4.
The 70-year-old man ran over to the home and pushed open the garage door. He saw the fire going up the wall and ran past it to a door that entered the home. Marshall ran through the house screaming to alert the residents and found Gary and Kathy Benjamin sleeping in their beds.
He woke the two up and ushered them out of the home to take refuge at a neighbor’s house. Firefighters were called to the scene to put out the fire. Gary and Kathy were mainly just shocked, but grateful to be alive.
“Lifesaver, lifesaver is all I can say,” Gary said. His wife added, “Hero, he’s our angel.”
The couple’s son, Nicholas, said that his parent’s life-long possessions were lost and he’s extremely sad for them. He shared what it was like for him to get the call that morning and the fear he had of losing his parents.
“I’m rushing down the highway on the phone with 911 in tears telling them that my father with horrible COPD might be trapped in his bathroom or bedroom, and that my mother was normally at work but hadn’t felt the best recently and may have not went in,” Nicholas Benjamin wrote on Go Fund Me.
Nicholas shared more on the Go Fund Me page that he created to help his parents during their difficult time.