GARDEN GROVE : City Honors Rescuer of Girl, Mother

With flames sweeping through her second-floor apartment in February, partially blind Pamela Reeds grabbed her 5-year-old daughter Angela and rushed to the window and “screamed and screamed for help.”

When no one immediately responded to her frantic pleas, Reeds, 42, considered tying bedsheets together and attempting to lower her daughter to safety.

“I thought we were going to suffocate,” Reeds said. “I’m sure we would have. There was a lot of toxic smoke. I wondered why nobody was helping us.”

But that was before Frank Valdez, 40, who lives in a downstairs unit of the Casa Mariposa Apartments, heard screams and sprang into action.

After telling his wife to call 911, he rushed outside where he saw Reeds and her daughter standing at their window with flames behind them.

He pushed a picnic table against the wall, put a chair on top and clambered to the top of the makeshift ladder and told Reeds to hand her daughter to him.

Valdez lowered the girl to safety.

The frightened Reeds then jumped but struck Valdez on the way down. He and a table helped break her fall.

Reeds and her daughter were not injured, but a roommate, Angie Gardner, 32, was found dead later in her bedroom. A Fire Department spokeswoman said the fire that broke out in the early morning of Feb. 19 was caused when a lamp was knocked over in a bedroom and a bare light bulb ignited some clothing.

Valdez was honored publicly this week by the City Council and given a certificate of appreciation “for his commendable efforts” in saving Reeds and her daughter.

Fire Chief Lon Cahill said there is no doubt that Valdez’s actions contributed to saving the life of the mother and daughter before the arrival of firefighters.

Reeds, who was on hand at the ceremony in the council chambers, said that when Valdez climbed atop the chair, she put her hopes and her daughter’s life in his hands. “I did exactly what he told me.”

Valdez said he didn’t have time to think. “It was like a compulsion and I just knew what to do. It was kind of scary.”