FIFE, Wash. - A disabled veteran was pulled from a burning house by a teenaged good Samaritan who risked his own life when he rushed into the flames to save his neighbor. Clayton Steffen is just 18, but when he saw flames and smoke pouring out the home next door, he acted.
It was Monday around 2 p.m. when Clayton says, by chance, he looked out the window, and saw his neighbor's house on fire. Before he knew it, he was kicking in the door and pulling his 64-year-old neighbor to safety.
"Actually, I was running in when the window shattered and a piece glass flew right by my head," said Clayton.
Clayton kept going into what’s now a charred skeleton of his neighbor's small backyard apartment.
"Tell you the truth, I don't really know why but I did, I didn't think about it anything," he said. "(I was trying) to find him, and found him."
He knew Richard Dever, disabled, and his wife Glenda were inside.
Clayton fought through smoke going into the back of the building asthe disabled man's daughter went into the front.
"I just kicked in that door really, and a whole cloud of smoke came out," Clayton said. "(I) ran and ran out, couldn't breath and ran back in again."
Meanwhile, Andrea Dever was pulling out her 54-year-old stepmother.
Neighbor's could only snap cell phone pictures as the flames roared through the house.
The fire was so hot it melted nearby cars, blackened photos and stole Andrea's father's fading military memories.
Andrea lists some of the lost items.
"Pictures of all the people he was in the military with, family photos, wedding photos," she said.
Even his prosthetic leg was destroyed.
"It's something you never want to deal with, and you hear people going through it, and think it's never going to be me," said Jason Ruzicka, Andrea's fiance.
But Clayton is dealing with how it could have been worse, if he didn’t happen to look out of his window.
“That’s the most scariest part about it," he said.
That if I didn’t see it, they could have well be dead.”
Andrea’s step-mother, Glenda Dever is listed in serious condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Firefighters estimate the damage at nearly $40,000.
They say the fire was likely caused by a lit cigarette.
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