People : Spotlight on achievers : Families Recognized for Helping After Fire
City officials honored three families Tuesday for helping neighbors whose home was destroyed by a fire.
The City Council commended Carole Ettlin and relatives Keith and Donna Beauregard, Gloria and Greg Crose and JoAnn and Kim Crawford for emergency help to the Nguyen family in September.
Kevin and Kim Nguyen and their three children returned to their Hester Place home after a children’s festival to find the house destroyed by a blaze that fire officials blamed on a faulty electrical wiring system.
The neighbors guarded the house until the family returned, retrieved what they could and then baby-sat the children while the stunned parents surveyed the damage.
“We did what we did because we had to and we wanted to. Anyone would have done the same,” JoAnn Crawford said, adding that much credit should go to the Garden Grove Fire Department: “They were wonderful.”
Fire Chief Vincent F. Bonacker said of the good neighbors, “The entire community can benefit from their positive example. Because of their actions, a devastating personal tragedy was made a little more bearable for the family involved.”
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
