DETROIT -- When Sgt. Bryant Piotrowski returned home from his shift on Feb. 19, 2007, his wife told him she was carrying their child.
What she didn't know then was that he came very close to never knowing he was going to be a father.
He ran into trouble the night before while battling a commercial building fire with Tactical Mobile Squad 5
During an accountability check, firefighters determined that Piotrowski was missing.
Firefighter Ronald Mitchell ran back into the building to look for him. "It was a pretty good sized building, maybe, 60 by 100. I was about a quarter of the way back, and calling him. I could vaguely hear him," Mitchell recalled during a telephone interview.
Parts of the building were collapsing. The fire was hot. Conditions were getting worse.
Mitchell went out, grabbed a hoseline and started hitting the fire. He called out. But, he could no longer hear the lost firefighter.
"I remembered about where I was when I last heard him. Then, I actually stumbled on or kicked him. I reached over and grabbed him. He was motionless. I had the line in one hand, and him in the other. Then, I saw the lights outside. We made it."
Piotrowski, who was running low on air when Mitchell found him, was treated at the scene. "He was back on his next shift," Mitchell said.
Mitchell, a 12-year veteran of the Detroit Fire Department, said he doesn't feel like a hero. "It was part of the job."
"What was really incredible though, is his wife telling him she was pregnant when he got home the next day. He told her later what happened to him."
