Parents of Infant Fire Victim Pledge to Reject Bitterness

Even as they raced toward their baby-sitter’s burning home, knowing that the odds were 50-50 that their baby girl might be dead, Sue and Don Jordan made a tearful pact in the cab of their truck.

They would love each other more than ever. And they would not let bitterness ruin their lives.

Two weeks after their only child was killed in a day-care home unprotected by a smoke detector, the newlyweds are keeping that promise. They do not blame Pat Orozco, the baby-sitter who suffered burns while rescuing two children and trying in vain to save two more. They worry about her. In fact, they still think she is “God’s gift to children.”

In their first lengthy interview since the June 8 tragedy that killed their daughter, Jessica, who was 8 months old, the couple talked about their regret at not checking for a smoke detector, about their belief that the public’s new-found awareness “was part of God’s plan.” And they talked of forgiveness.

“It was very difficult to take her stuff out of here, and we had to do it quickly,” said Don Jordan, 24, a silk-screen artist who works for a large Anaheim sign company. “I miss her so much. Every day. But we’ve got to keep moving on, looking ahead. Keeping our chin up.”

Sue Jordan, 21, added as she leaned into the couch at their modest Huntington Beach apartment: “For us, we experienced a loss. But we weren’t there to suffer the torture of the whole situation.

“It would be a miracle if (Orozco) ever took care of children again, but I hope she finds the courage.”

Don Jordan grew up in Long Beach, playing the drums for the marching band at Wilson High School.

Susan Jordan spent her youth in Diamond Bar. She grew up, however, at age 15. That was the year she found herself unmarried and pregnant. When she finally told her mother that she was carrying a child, she was six months along. She delivered an eight-pound son, whom she named Robert Allen. Through St. Anne’s Maternity Home in Los Angeles, she put him up for adoption.

“I think it was the best decision I ever made, the most mature,” she said. “I certainly don’t regret it because I gave that child a better life.

“But for me, losing Jessica was doubly hard. Because now I feel I’ve lost two children.”

Through a mutual friend, the couple met 20 months ago at a local watering hole. They married July 1, 1988.

Until recently, they struggled financially to make ends meet. “We used to worry if we were going to be able to feed Jessica,” Don Jordan said, inhaling on a Marlboro Light.

In the few weeks before the fire, he added, “we were just starting to get on the right track.”

They had gone through several day-care providers, all of them licensed. They called a county child care hot line for referrals. “It was real important to make sure they were licensed,” she said.

One baby-sitter seemed hardly to pay attention to their daughter, who quickly got her first case of diaper rash. Another sitter had a heart attack and died. Still another just cost too much.

After those false starts, they discovered Orozco. The price was right, she had terrific references, she lived a mile from them and she clearly loved their little girl.

“She treated her like she was her own,” Don Jordan said.

Susan Jordan said: “Pat could tell you what Jessica had done all day, how many times she’d drooled, what noises she’d made. You knew she paid a lot of attention to her. Jessica came home clean and happy every day. What more could you want from a baby-sitter?”

It was barely 10 a.m. that Thursday morning when Paul Thornton, the friend who had introduced the Jordans, spotted the smoke at their baby-sitter’s Audrey Drive home. He could find a phone number only for Don Jordan’s mother. He called her immediately. He said there was an emergency at the day-care home.

As she spoke to him, Jordan’s mother peered out the window of her office a mile down the street. She too could see the dark billows. Seconds later, she reached her son at work and broke the news. She suspected a fire but said only that there was an emergency.

Don Jordan called his friend with frantic questions. What was going on? What emergency?

“There’s been a fire at the baby-sitter’s house, and you have to come down here!” said Thornton, who lives a few doors down from Orozco. He then told Jordan that he had heard that two children had died.

“I almost fainted, then I screamed,” Don Jordan recalled. “Then my boss said a prayer for us before I left, and he was crying. It was horrible.”

He had already called his wife, a receptionist at a mortgage company down the street. “You got to get off work now! There’s a fire at the baby-sitter’s house! I’ll come pick you up.”

Susan Jordan dropped the phone and turned to her boss, saying only that she had to leave.

“I didn’t know how to act,” she said. “I felt like I was in la-la land, like some bad acid trip or something. It was like I was behind some glass wall, and everything I said was an echo.”

‘Oh My God! Oh My God!’

As she stood waiting for her husband at the curb, “the butterflies started. Then my heart started pounding, and I was saying, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’

“I tried to to think positive, and (her husband) didn’t tell me that two children had died until we were on our way. I don’t think I ever prayed so much to the Man above.”

Speeding down the freeway at 80 m.p.h., a sobbing Don Jordan turned to his wife. “Whatever happens, I love you, and we have got to stay close.”

She nodded, then said, “Don, if she’s dead there’s nothing we can do to bring her back. Being angry at somebody, anybody, won’t replace her.”

Before pulling up to the Audrey Drive home, Susan Jordan said, they agreed that “harboring bad feelings would ruin our life.”

Moments later, authorities gently told them that Jessica was dead.

As details of the fire emerged, the Jordans learned that one of the four children had started the fire with a disposable lighter that ignited an upholstered chair. Orozco, who had been in the bathroom, ran out to find smoke and flames. She grabbed two children, including Jessica, and ran for the door. Her arm was on fire, and she dropped the Jordan baby, then fled outside.

The intensity of the fire prevented her from returning for Jessica and John D. Reilly IV, age 13 months. Several heroic bystanders tried unsuccessfully to do the same.

The Jordans are still in a numb state, and the death of their baby does not quite seem real.

“It’s almost like, ‘Wow, was she ever really here?’ ” Don Jordan said. “If the pictures and her things weren’t still here, it would almost be like a dream. An eight-month dream.”

A week ago Wednesday, they buried their baby. The Jordans said Orozco’s children attended the funeral, and Orozco herself tried. Hospitalized with burns from the fire, Orozco tried to dress herself to attend the memorial, her children told the Jordans. She had to be sedated.

“We walked by them in the funeral procession,” Susan Jordan said, “and we asked, ‘How is your mom?’ They said she wished she had died instead of the kids. She loved all of them like they were her own.”

Surviving Children Home

Two days later, Orozco was released from the hospital, but she has declined to be interviewed. The two children who survived the fire with injuries are both home now. The other baby who died has also been buried.

John Reilly’s parents are lobbying for tougher standards at day-care homes, and the Jordans appeared Monday before the Huntington Beach City Council. Some of their wishes were answered when both the Legislature and the city approved stricter requirements.

The city now requires all homes, day-care or not, to have a smoke detector. And if the governor signs a bill passed by both the Assembly and Senate, smoke detectors and fire extinguishers will be mandatory in all the state’s day-care homes.

Although it is too late for Jessica Jordan, her parents are pleased that something good has come from their personal tragedy. They hope to have another child, but not in the immediate future.

“We just have to go on from here,” Susan Jordan said. “But it will take us some time to get over this.”