Heroes: Orange County residents from lifeguards to nurses gave hope and touched others’ lives in 1989. : ANAHEIM : Year Later, Apartment Blaze Still Haunts Pair

When Marlo Advincula gave his girlfriend a Dalmatian puppy last Christmas, the couple had no idea how appropriate that breed--the firefighters’ mascot--would be for them.

Two weeks later, in the predawn of Jan. 9, they would risk their lives to help evacuate residents from a fire at the Casa Granada apartment complex in Anaheim.

Although the blaze temporarily displaced 30 people whose apartments became uninhabitable and caused about $500,000 in damage, only Advincula’s girlfriend, Kimberly Ann McCown, was injured.

It happened about 1:30 a.m. that Monday, as the Anaheim couple were driving past 2555 W. Winston Road and saw smoke. They drove to a nearby supermarket, told a clerk to call the fire department and circled back to the flaming building.

“Nobody was there,” said Advincula, a 24-year-old sales management student at Golden West College. “We could start to feel the heat. But it was so quiet, like no one even knew that there was a fire.”

“If we had left, no one would have woken up,” McCown, 21, said. “That’s how I felt at the time.”

The couple drove past the complex honking their horn and yelling, “Wake up! Fire! Wake up!”

Then, as Advincula ran to an apartment complex across the street for help, McCown ran to the smoke-filled building.

“I banged on the apartment windows to wake people up,” she said. “I started from the left, and I thought to myself that I’m never going to make it to the other side.”

Through a parted curtain at one apartment, McCown saw a woman panic and scream as her husband tried but failed to open their door. So McCown kicked in the window, and another witness, 28-year-old Brad McMillan, broke away the window to pull the couple out. McCown injured herself kicking in the window.

“Everything happened so fast,” McCown said. “I didn’t even realize I was bleeding. I vaguely felt pain, but I thought I might have sprained my ankle or something.”

It was Advincula who first saw the injury.

“It wasn’t a pretty sight,” he said. “It was really cut up at four different places, and pieces of skin were folded over so you can see the flesh. I felt so helpless.”

Advincula wrapped his sweat shirt around the wound on her lower right leg and carried McCown away from the blaze as the fire engines started to arrive.

“It seemed like forever until the paramedics came,” McCown said. “I was just crying.”

The leg was seriously injured and required about 100 stitches. Now, McCown said, “I don’t wear shorts, and I don’t go to the beach because people would see it and ask me what happened, and I would have to think through the whole thing again. I wouldn’t even say I have half the feeling back in my right leg. I can use it. The motor function still works. But I can’t feel it.”

McCown, a surgical nursing student at Cypress College, wants plastic surgery, but neither her insurance company nor the apartment owners will cover it.

“I used to wonder,” she said, if the act was worth disfigurement. “But had I passed by the fire, I wouldn’t be at peace with myself either.”

This Christmas, Advincula said he will be giving McCown a Dalmatian painting. “She has this fascination with black and white. That’s why I gave the dog to her in the first place.”

McCown said they still have the dog, Freckles, which has become spoiled within the past year.

“He doesn’t even think he’s a dog anymore,” Advincula said.