Positivity: Investigator tracks down reluctant hero who pulled girl from flames in 2002
From Grand Rapids, Michigan (HT Good News Blog):
February 26, 2008
It’s a Friday afternoon in August of 2002, and Marion Smith and his wife are chatting with their pastor and his wife in front of the Smiths’ home on Dickinson Street SE.
Suddenly, the pastor’s wife notices smoke coming from a home down the block. Marion figures it’s nothing more than an over-stoked barbecue, but he ambles down to see anyway.
Within seconds, he’s bolting up the stairway of a house whose second floor is engulfed in smoke. He can hear a youngster’s voice calling for help, and he drops to his hands and knees at the entrance to the west bedroom.
“Stick out your hand,” he yells into the blackness. “I’m comin’ in.”
Nearly six years later, Grand Rapids Fire Investigator Pablo Martinez is working through the bottom drawer of a file cabinet in his office on LaGrave Avenue SE.
He’s fishing through a stack of unkempt business cards when he spots something vaguely familiar. “What the heck is this?” he whispers to himself. “Omigosh, I still have this?”
It’s a plaque made of Lucite. It honors a hero, and Martinez sits back in his chair to wonder why the thing is still here, buried in his office.
He dusts it off and starts making phone calls, trying to track down a man who has since moved. He calls friends in the police department and goes with a modicum of hope to an address on the city’s north end.
Martinez is flabbergasted to find the wrong man — a white man who owns the same name and birth date as the black gentleman he’s seeking.
He spends the better part of the day playing detective and finally pins down a residence where the man, now undergoing a divorce, at least used to live. A boy of perhaps 15 answers the door, and Martinez establishes it’s the man’s son.
The kid is put off some by Martinez’s uniform, so the fire investigator tells him he has something for his dad, and does he want to see what it is?
Martinez unveils the plaque, relates how the kid’s dad saved a life years ago, and can you help me find him?
The kid’s eyes go wide as saucers. “Daaang,” he says in wonderment. “My daddy did that?” …..
Go here for the rest of the story.
