Passerby Saves Woman From Burning Home : Rescue: He is praised as a hero for groping through thick smoke and pulling the elderly victim to safety.

“Is anybody in there?” Victor Alvarez shouted as he banged on the door to the burning house. All he could hear was a woman’s soft, long moan. At that moment, the 30-year-old Inglewood resident made a decision that, on Sunday, had him being praised as a hero.

With the help of a passerby whose name he does not know, Alvarez broke through a window Saturday evening, entered the burning home, groped his way through a frighteningly thick fog of black smoke and dragged 69-year-old Molly Bradfield to safety.

“In a case like this, you are talking about seconds--a minute can be the difference in life,” said Capt. Bill Abbott of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, whose firefighters arrived at the scene shortly after the rescue. “It can be safely said that he probably did help save her life.”

Bradfield suffered burns to her arms and face. She was in stable condition Sunday at the Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center in Hawthorne.

According to Abbott, the blaze caused an estimated $70,000 damage. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Abbott said firefighters are looking into the possibility that Bradfield fell asleep while smoking.

The fire began shortly before 6 p.m. Alvarez and his girlfriend, Gina Tanori, 26, were on their way home, driving south on La Cienega Boulevard. Alvarez recalls spotting smoke coming from a nearby cross-street, 124th Place. He turned the corner, parked in front of Bradfield’s house and sent his girlfriend across the street to call the Fire Department.

“When we got there, there was no one around,” he said Sunday. “There were flames coming around the back of the house and a lot of smoke.”

He went to the front door, knocked and called inside. As he heard Bradfield moan, he yelled for her to open the door. Nothing happened. So he kicked in the front window and climbed inside.

“The minute I did that all kinds of smoke, thick black smoke, rushed forward,” he said. “I had no breath. There was a guy outside, calling my name and I told him to give me a hand.”

The man had been informed by Tanori that her boyfriend was inside the burning house. He grabbed Alvarez’s arm and helped him lean out the window to catch his breath. Alvarez took a deep breath, then went back inside the house. His eyes shut, he groped his way along the wall until he reached the front door.

When he opened it, he spotted Bradfield’s foot. The smoke was so thick he could not see the rest of her body. The woman was conscious, but could not speak. Later, outside the house, Alvarez saw her eyelids flutter.

“All I saw was her foot,” he said. “I dragged her toward the front door and then we grabbed her and we took her out. I thought maybe she was dead, but by the time we got her outside to the grass, she opened her eyes. Her eyes were blinking.”

By the time firefighters arrived, the passerby had gone.

Alvarez was being showered with attention Sunday. Television camera crews descended on his home, just eight blocks from the scene of the fire. For someone unaccustomed to life in the spotlight--he makes his living as an exterminator for a pest control service--it all seemed a bit bewildering.

“I never expected this,” he said. “I don’t really feel like a hero. I did what I had to do. She was there, she needed the help and I helped her.”