A Life Saved — A Favor Returned

BROCKPORT, NEW YORK

Driving home one night earlier this year, New York Department of Transportation employee Brenda Haight saw smoke rising over residential rooftops here and assumed it came from a fireplace. Then she drove closer and discovered a house engulfed in flames.

Haight, a six-year highway-maintenance worker and a member of the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/AFSCME Local 1000, dialed 9-1-1 on her cell phone and then hurried to the burning house. There she discovered the residents were inside. She quickly got the family — Ray and Noreen Ehnot, and their teenage son — away from the structure and offered comfort as their home and belongings disappeared in smoke. "I held the woman of the house in my arms as she cried in disbelief, sobbing at the flames and wondering what was taking the fire department so long to respond," Haight recalls. "They're on their way," she repeatedly assured the wife.

More than 75 volunteer firefighters soon arrived and brought the fire under control. A Red Cross Disaster Mobile Unit roared up, too. "I walked the mother to [the Red Cross vehicle] so she could get inside where it was warm," says Haight. As she started to leave, Noreen "grabbed my arm and pulled me in with her."

For the first time, the two were able to see each other's faces in the light, and almost simultaneously, each said, "I know you!"

They couldn't quite place each other. Then the wife remembered. Haight recalls Noreen telling her: "I was the attending emergency-room nurse about four years ago who saved your life the night you were rushed to the hospital. Now, here you are tonight to save mine!"

Right she was. Haight, who suffers from an eating disorder, had once overdosed on drugs prescribed for her illness and had been rushed to a local hospital. The nurse who helped save her life was — in a remarkable coincidence — the same woman Haight had just rescued from the inferno.