The morning after a Salinas police officer rescued an elderly woman from a burning house, her Pine Street neighbors expressed awe at the speed with which events unfolded and gratitude for the heroism of police officer Jason Scott and his colleagues.
Scott crawled into the burning house under thick smoke Thursday night to find Mary Harrington, 85, in a rear bedroom and carry her to safety.
"It's a miracle of God," said neighbor Josephine Morris, whose family has lived next-door to Harrington for years. "He saved her life."
Twenty-four hours later, Scott was back on the job at the Salinas Police Department, where he modestly described what happened after he arrived ahead of fire crews.
"There was a lot of smoke," he said. But the neighbors were telling him, "You've got to go in and get Mary!"
Scott, 29, said he went to the front door and saw low flames.
"When I kicked the front door, everything flashed over. The front room was too hot."
He went to an open side door, but "flames were coming out, five to 10 feet into the driveway."
Scott was wearing only his short-sleeved police uniform and bulletproof vest. No protective fire garb. No boots. No helmet. Not even a jacket. But he kept hearing, "You've got to go in to get Mary!"
He found another side door. It opened to a room filled with swirling black smoke from the ceiling to within a foot of the floor.
Scott said he called out to Harrington, not really expecting anyone to be inside.
"Mary, are you there?"
"And she said, 'yes.'''
"I didn't believe it at first," Scott said.
"I called again."
Harrington answered 'Yes' again.
So Scott went in. He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled inside.
"I couldn't open my eyes," Scott said. The stinging black smoke was too thick to see through anyway.
"I kept talking to her."
Following the sound of Harrington's voice in a life-and-death version of the swimming-pool game "Marco Polo," Scott inched forward. He could barely hear Harrington's responses over the roar of the fire.
He came to a door frame, a bedroom, but he realized the voice was coming from farther back.
"It was hot. It was really hot in there."
He kept crawling.
"It was just really loud. And it smelled like smoke."
He reached another door. There she was.
"I felt her leg," Scott said. "I couldn't see anything at all."
"I reached up and grabbed her hand. I said, 'Mary, we gotta go.'''
"She said, 'OK.'''
Following the mental map he had made on his way in, Scott began to crawl out the same way, now leading Harrington by the hand. His eyes were still closed.
Realizing their progress was too slow, Scott said, "I picked her up and opened my eyes. I saw a bright orange glow."
"When I determined it was too smoky to see, I closed my eyes."
He made his way out of the house and into the side yard. He lay Harrington on the ground. But not for long.
"A minute or so after we came out," he said, "that's when the fire came out that door."
An neighbor who had met Scott at the side door picked up Harrington and carried her across the street, away from the plume of smoke.
"I was glad we made it out. I just wanted to get out," Scott said.
The cause of the fire remained under investigation Friday.
Scott said that as a police officer, his normal role would be to block off the street and keep onlookers back. He was a volunteer firefighter when he was in high school in Maryland. He said that training definitely came in handy Thursday night. It helped in "the moving through the dark and smoky hot places."
He added, "The neighbors were a big help, a huge help."
"All the neighbors were truly trying to help Mary."
And all the while, he said, he kept hearing "the big voice in the crowd," the woman's voice telling him "to go get Mary."
"I'm thinking there's no way anyone can get in there, and she was saying, 'You've got to go get her! You've got to go get Mary!'''
That was longtime neighbor Morris urging Scott on.
"Anybody would've done it," Scott said.
"Once you heard a voice, that's when you come to the realization you've got to go in there because there's somebody in there."
After the fire, Scott went to a local hospital, where he was treated for smoke inhalation. He took the rest of the night off.
Harrington also was treated for smoke inhalation. She remained at a local hospital on Friday though she had been up and walking around a bit before rescuers took her to the hospital.
"She's OK," said son Gary Harrington. "Hopefully she'll be out pretty soon."
Said neighbor Blanche Williams: "The firemen and the police did an excellent job getting her out. That was very brave."
"You can replace a house," Morris said, "but you can't replace a life."
Salinas police Lt. Steve Perryman said, "We're duly impressed. We're very proud of him."
