A mother in Arizona woke to find she was trapped in the second story of her apartment home as it quickly engulfed in flames.
Claudia Jimenez opened the window and called out to anyone who could hear, needing somehow to find a way to escape while the front door was blocked by the fire.
The first person on the scene wasn’t a firefighter, it was Joe Hollins, who lived in a homeless encampment with his wife near Jimenez’s house.
“All I see is a lady pull open the window and she’s screaming ‘Please help me, please help me,'” Hollins told CBS News.
The mother of two then had to make a difficult choice. It’s not unusual or prejudicial to be wary of people living on the streets, but for her one-year-old daughter Valerie and eight-year-old Natalie, Hollins may have been their only hope of survival.
Under the window, Hollins called to Jimenez saying that he would catch the children in his arms. She trusted the man, and not only dropped Valerie and Natalie, but the two dogs as well. It took Jimenez herself a while to summon the courage to jump, but she managed it, and Hollins still had the strength to catch her.
As things calmed down, the family thanked Hollins profusely, though the man said that he did what anyone would do in that situation.
“Yes, anyone would. Those were children,” he said.
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“I will forever be thankful to him, you know?” said Jimenez. “Like I said, to me he was an angel,” Jiminez said. “Because of him we’re here, we’re alive and my daughters are safe.”
While the family lost everything, community members are helping support them to get back on their feet, while viewers at CBS want to know how they can support Hollins and honor what he did.
WATCH the story below, (For Those Outside the U.S: View video at CBS.com)
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