2 Men Rescue Mother and Child From Fire : Heroes: A passerby catches toddler thrown from window in apartment where the victims were trapped. Then a neighbor, despite broken leg in cast, breaks fall of the mother when she leaps.

Late to a sales appointment Thursday morning, Andrew Quihuiz decided to take a shortcut. The decision saved a little girl’s life.

As he drove down Eton Place, Quihuiz spotted a duplex engulfed in flames. At the window was a 26-year-old woman in distress. He pulled over.

“I saw a lady screaming that she had a baby inside and I said, ‘Throw her out!’ ” Quihuiz said.

She did. Quihuiz caught the toddler, tossed by her mother, Christine Lyddon, from a window moments before the drama took another turn when she herself was rescued--by a man with a broken leg.

Quihuiz caught the girl “like a baseball. I took her over to a truck and sat her there and she told me that she was worried about her toys burning. I told her that I would buy her new toys.”

The child, Christy, who fire officials said accidentally started the fire while playing with a cigarette lighter, suffered smoke inhalation but was otherwise not injured.

Although her daughter was safe, the flames advanced on Lyddon. At this point, Quihuiz was joined by 26-year-old Scott Belt, a neighbor who had seen smoke through his kitchen window. Belt, wearing a cast over his broken leg, persuaded Lyddon to jump.

“I coached her about five times and finally, she came out head-first, like a torpedo,” Belt said.

Belt was able to break the heavyset Lyddon’s fall, but she still landed head-first on the asphalt. She suffered numerous injuries, including a broken ankle and smoke inhalation, fire officials said. Belt’s leg was OK, but his back hurt, he said.

“If [Belt] hadn’t done what he did, this woman would have been seriously injured or killed,” said Anaheim Fire Investigator Mike Doty. “Standing there with a cast on his leg and risking further injury, he is a very brave man.”

Doty had equal praise for the 37-year-old Quihuiz. Both men, he said, will receive special commendations from the Fire Department, which extinguished the fire in about 15 minutes. It was confined to the one apartment.

Mother and daughter were taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange for treatment, but hospital officials declined to release their conditions at the request of family members. Relatives declined to comment.

Fire officials said that Lyddon apparently was asleep in her bedroom when the fire started about 9 a.m. inside her daughter’s closet.

“It immediately cut off any way of escaping once it hit the hallway,” Doty said. “They were trapped and were lucky there was someone there to catch them.”

Quihuiz, a resident of Anaheim, and Belt took their heroics in stride.

Quihuiz said he had no time to think as he pulled up to the burning building and immediately told Lyddon to throw him the little girl.

After mother and daughter were safe, Quihuiz rushed off to his appointment then went on to work at Simon’s Lock & Safe in Fullerton. But his boss, Fred Blankenhorn, sent him home.

“He took in a lot of smoke and he was sick as a dog when he got here,” Blankenhorn said. “We chased him out of here and told him to come back tomorrow. He’s a nice guy and this is something we’d expect of him.”

Quihuiz was modest about his efforts.

“It feels pretty good,” he said later. “If I had to do it again, I would.”

The experience also left Belt with good feelings. He has been unemployed since he broke his leg in a motorcycle accident last December.

“I’m just glad I could help,” he said. “It’s good to know that in my lifetime, I helped save someone’s life.”

Doty said that while fire officials are relieved that no lives were lost, the cause of the fire was an all too familiar one and something that could have been avoided.

“I have very strong feelings about this,” the veteran investigator said. “You don’t leave a gun around because kids are going to misuse them and hurt themselves. Lighters and matches are no different.

“Parents are going to have to realize that they can’t leave these items lying around. It frustrates me that people don’t take this more seriously.”

Just last month in Anaheim, an 11-month-old girl strapped in her car seat was killed in a car fire ignited by a cigarette lighter. One of the child’s siblings had been playing with the lighter and accidentally started the fast-moving blaze.

“I counsel kids who play with matches all the time,” Doty said. “But the first step is, keep the matches and lighters away.”