St. Paul Man Cheered for Saving Family From Burning Home

April 03--The smell of smoke hung in the air in a St. Paul neighborhood the day after a blaze destroyed two homes, and a family returned to see if they could salvage anything. They were tearful, but grateful no one had been injured.

The man who may have saved one of the families drove by Thursday to show the aftermath to his 11-year-old son. "He didn't believe the magnitude until he saw the house," Donnell Gibson said.

Nearly 24 hours earlier, Gibson had been driving by the North End homes when he noticed smoke. He could see a fire as he passed and three small children outside. Gibson did a fast U-turn and jumped out of his car.

The children ran into their house, and Gibson followed, yelling, "The house is on fire! Get out!" He got the occupants out and ran back inside several times until everyone had reached safety; he thought about 10 people had been in the home.

In 2011, Mayor Chris Coleman had held up Gibson, 29, as a role model during his State of the City address. Gibson graduated from the city's EMS Academy in 2009.

"Donnell's courage was on full display this week, and we are thankful he and those he saved are safe," Coleman said Thursday. "When I met Donnell, I was immediately struck by his optimism and his desire to chart a positive path forward.

He had a tough childhood, but with the help of caring teachers and mentors, he sought a different path."

The fire on Front Avenue, near Western Avenue, broke out Wednesday afternoon. It was caused by a downed power line in a yard and high winds, which ignited dried vegetation and spread to a house, the fire department said.

The house of retired trucker Jimmy Ware burned to the ground. Ware, 66, grew up in the home, said his daughter, Jessica Schmidt. He had no insurance, and Schmidt said they were figuring out Thursday what he would do next.

The fire spread to the home next door and damaged another. Ngae Lay and his wife, Ta Pay Pay, had lived in their house since 2007, when they moved to St. Paul from a refugee camp in Thailand. They have eight children, ages 8 to 21.

The city said they will have to raze the home, but Ngae Lay and Ta Pay Pay returned Thursday and found a bin of clothes they could salvage -- they have special significance because they are worn during celebrations in the Karen community.

The family also recovered some documents they needed, but the rest of their possessions were gone or damaged, said Barb Lawrence-Windholz, a friend who met the family as a teacher at Humboldt High School.

They are staying with relatives, and the Red Cross was helping the family, who Lawrence-Windholz described as strong and tightly knit.

At the time of the fire, Ta Pay Pay was home, along with five of the children and a young cousin, Lawrence-Windholz said.

Gibson spotted the fire as he was coming from playing with his children at a West St. Paul park, driving to work at the Rice Recreation Center. He saw the fire spreading to two vehicles parked between the houses; Gibson worried about the risk of an explosion.

When he ran in the house, "it felt like when you first open an oven," Gibson said. Smoke was filling the upstairs, and it was hard to breathe.

Gibson persuaded the children he'd seen outside to leave the house. He ran back in and saw a young woman who seemed confused about why he was there and an older woman who began to panic. Gibson pulled them to safety.

"The younger girl was pointing back at the house like, 'There's more people,' " Gibson said, so he went back in.

Gibson wanted the attention of anyone still inside -- he punched the wall that led to upstairs and stomped as hard as he could by the entry to the basement and screamed warnings. He went in and out of the house twice more, bringing out young people who apparently had been napping.

Gibson didn't want attention, but people told reporters what he'd done and they asked him to share his story.

It wasn't the first time Gibson has been in the spotlight.

At his 2011 State of the City address, the mayor described the EMS Academy as "a pathway into the medical field" for low-income residents. Coleman told Gibson's story, saying that he'd been sent to live with his grandmother during middle school after his father went to prison.

Gibson's grandmother died, and the young man then spent the next few years moving among more than a dozen foster homes. In high school, he had no permanent home and slept on different couches each night.

But Gibson was the first person in his family to graduate from high school -- Johnson Senior High School in 2004. And when he became a father while a high school senior, he vowed to provide his son the stability he hadn't known.

It was Donnell Gibson Jr., now 11, who was in the car as Gibson drove past the scene of the fire Thursday.

Gibson, who became a certified emergency medical technician at the EMS Academy, said he reflected on his training while was trying to help the family Wednesday.

"I thank God that the situation didn't escalate to where I had to use my EMT work," he said. "Just my instinct alone was kind of what guided me there."

Gibson, who lives in the Dayton's Bluff neighborhood where he grew up, is a recreation leader at the Teen Zone at the Rice Recreation Center and a teaching assistant at Battle Creek Middle School. He dreams of becoming a firefighter.

He said he hopes the community will pray for the families who lost their homes in the fire.

"I wasn't looking for any accolades and I don't feel like I woke up any different, but I did hug my kids a lot harder," Gibson said. "My grandma always raised me to think that sometimes there's another life that's meant to be saved by you."

Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at 651-228-5262. Follow her at twitter.com/MaraGottfried.

Copyright 2015 - Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.