Scene Took Firefighters Far Beyond Call of Duty

They still think about that morning a couple of weeks ago, when answering just another routine call about a possible sick person didn’t turn out to be so routine. Since then, other people have asked them about it, what it was like to be there. But even if no one ever asked, the three-man crew at Fire Station 54 in the Foothills Ranch area wouldn’t need reminders. All three men have a mental picture that will stick with them for a lifetime.

You have to keep in mind that plenty of calls to firefighters fit a pattern. So when Pat Antrim, Jeff Bekeris and Peter Beal headed for a condo in Lake Forest about midmorning on Jan. 6, they figured they might encounter someone with the flu or, at worst, heart attack symptoms. It’s the kind of call they handle three to four times a day, and their job is to provide preliminary medical help, if needed, before paramedics arrive.

But when they got to the Lake Forest condo and saw three Orange County sheriff’s deputies, they figured they had something more. A deputy at the door told them that a woman, possibly dead, was in an upstairs bed. Somewhere in the house, he told the firefighters, are supposed to be two young children.

Antrim and Beal got to the bedroom first and saw a woman under a sheet up to her shoulders. The unmistakable smell of death hit the two men. Sitting on the bed inches away from the woman, but not making a sound, was a 2-year-old girl.

They lifted the child from the bed and quickly determined that the woman was dead. As a deputy began looking in closets and other rooms for the second child, Antrim told Beal to pull back the covers to inspect the woman’s body for possible signs of a crime.

“That’s when the 3-year-old popped out,” Antrim said. “She was lying under the covers, snuggled up next to her. She came out crying. She was with open arms, scared and looking for someone to latch onto.”

Bekeris knelt down and opened his arms, and the girl went to him. “She said, ‘I want my Mom,’ ” Bekeris said. “I opened my arms up, she looked at me, she needed someone to hold onto, someone to trust. She was the older one and obviously had more cognizance of what was going on. But I don’t think she totally realized her mother had passed away. She came right over to me and I picked her up right away.”

Because he had stayed behind to park the truck, Bekeris had been the third man in the room and it had taken him a while to sort out what he saw. “I was caught a little off guard,” he says. “About the time Pete pulled the cover back, there were fairly obvious signs of death. That’s when the older girl came out. At that moment, it clicked--oh, boy, the mother is dead and the daughter was curled up next to her.”

It was the kind of moment they don’t train you for. At least, not specifically. The crew responds to accident scenes and girds itself to see death and tragedy close up. But something about two baby girls lying in their mother’s death bed affected them like no previous case had.

From then on, the three threw away the firefighter manual. Although their official duties ended once they determined they couldn’t help the woman, the three decided on the spot to stay.

Beal, a 40-year-old father of two young boys the same ages as the girls, was the impetus.

“It seemed to me that Peter transitioned into a dad mode, which is a natural thing for him,” says Antrim, the ranking member of the trio. “The level of caring and things he wanted to do for the children weren’t what I would describe as the typical firefighter viewpoint.”

The children must be bathed, Beal told his crew members. The 2-year-old was diaper-less and soiled. So was the older daughter, probably from lying in the bed.

“I got a clean diaper and put that on right away,” Beal says. “I took [the older girl] to her bedroom, and she helped me pick out her clothes. Having two boys, I had no clue what size was going to fit little girls or even where they had their clothes. She showed me where they were and whose outfit went for who. So I picked out a couple outfits and went back upstairs.”

He and Bekeris gave the girls a bubble bath and unmatted their hair. Both men were touched by the poignancy of the moment, such as when Beal went to reach for a soft-soap shampoo and the 2-year-old said, “No. Mama’s,” indicating that was the soap her mother used for herself.

(Authorities later determined the girl’s mother--actually, their foster mother--had been dead about three days. An autopsy hasn’t identified the cause of death, and tests continue, authorities said this week.)

Finished with the baths, the men took the girls into the living room. They found videos for them to watch and sat with them until a Social Services caseworker arrived about 90 minutes later.

Back at the fire station, the three found themselves discussing the incident much of the rest of the day. Bekeris had been one of the Orange County firefighters who went to Oklahoma City after the bombing of the federal building in 1995, and this incident reminded him of that trauma.

The three speculated about the girls’ futures. Beal gave more than a passing thought to trying to adopt them. Bekeris remembered the moment that the older girl, who turned out to be a week shy of her fourth birthday, asked him about her mother. “I told her she was sleeping,” Bekeris said. “She didn’t ask me anything more.”

A few days later, Beal visited the girls at Orangewood Children’s Home, taking crayons and a coloring book for the older girl’s birthday. Just this week, a social worker told him the agency had found a foster home for the girls.

“It had an emotional impact on all three of us,” Antrim says. Nor does he expect to forget it.

“There are certain calls in your entire career that if you mention them, it’s like they happened yesterday,” he says. “For me, this was one of those calls that 10 to 15 years down the road, when someone brings it up, I’ll easily reflect on it and it will easily be brought back.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821, by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail at dana.parsons@latimes.com