Mother Drops Son Safely to Neighbor From Fiery Home

An El Toro mother alerted by her 3-year-old son’s cries of fire dropped him safely from a second-story window of their burning condominium into a neighbor’s arms.

Tricia Sheffield-Galaviz heard her son, Jonathan, screaming at 11:30 p.m. Monday in the upstairs bedroom next to hers. “Mommy! Mommy! The alarm’s going off, and there’s a fire!”

As she rushed to her child’s bedroom, thick black smoke enveloped her as it swept up the staircase to the second floor bedrooms.

“I didn’t have a telephone, so I couldn’t call for police or the Fire Department. I rushed to Jonathan’s room, grabbed him and brought him back to my bedroom and closed the door,” she said.

While one neighbor called the Fire Department, another, William Chan, 33, tried to calm the panicked mother, who by now was screaming and leaning out the second-floor window with Jonathan in her arms.

“She wanted to throw the boy down,” Chan recalled Tuesday. “I kept telling her, ‘Stay calm. Stay cool.’ ”

Finally--guided by Chan, who stood 18 feet below her--Sheffield-Galaviz grabbed Jonathan’s hands and slowly lowered the boy from the upstairs window as far as she could reach, then let him fall into Chan’s outstretched arms.

“His feet came first, but I caught him,” Chan said.

Chan then joined Mike Walker, 36, another neighbor, who had a garden hose and helped douse the flames that had lit the downstairs of the home with an eerie glow.

After firefighters arrived and made sure the fire was out, Sheffield-Galaviz walked downstairs and out the front door to safety, she said Tuesday. She was taken to Saddleback Community Hospital in Mission Viejo, where she was treated for smoke inhalation and released. Jonathan, although frightened, was not injured, she said.

Walker and Chan, who on Tuesday was nursing a bruised hand from efforts to pry open a locked door, received heart-felt thanks and bottles of wine for their help from Sheffield-Galaviz.

Chan was also credited with the rescue by Orange County Fire Department Capt. Patrick McIntosh.

And Jonathan, a rambunctious blond, spent the greater part of Tuesday retelling the story about the day “Mom threw me out the window.”

His mother said they had moved in seven weeks earlier and were supposed to have a telephone installed this week.

“I really have my neighbors to thank for their help,” she said Tuesday.

The fire was caused by an electrical short-circuit in the cord of a table lamp in the downstairs living room of the condominium in the 24500 block of Bendricon Lane, McIntosh said. The fire caused about $1,500 in damage, he added.