A retired New Jersey firefighter and his wife, enroute to the airport in the early hours of Sunday morning, were in the right place at the right time to help save a Roanoke-area family. The family was asleep, and didn’t realize that their house was heavily involved in fire.
The firefighter, who was initially unidentified to the family that lost thier home, also provided them with money to assist them, and then made his way on to the airport. His identity was later revealed.
From our friends at Roanoke.com:
Patrick and Margie Lenez of Wirtz had left home around 3:30 a.m. Sunday to drive daughter Nicole to the Roanoke Regional Airport, where she would catch a 5:30 a.m. flight.
The couple’s actions later that morning “very possibly may have saved five lives,” said Franklin County Fire Marshal Bennie Russell.
Yet no one at the scene of the house fire early Sunday learned Patrick and Margie’s names. Their identity remained a mystery, even after Patrick gave the displaced family more than $100 that morning to help them adjust to losing nearly everything they owned.
Turns out that Patrick, 52, is a New Jersey native and a retired firefighter. He said today that he and Margie, 50, would never have been up and traveling that early if Nicole had not needed to be at the airport by 4:30 a.m.
Read more about Mr Lenez’s efforts, and how he was later identified at: Retired N.J. firefighter who alerted family to blaze downplays role – Roanoke.com.
