LOVELAND, Ohio — The smoke alarms were still ringing inside the ruined husk of the Carrington Crossings condo complex when Loveland Symmes Fire Captain Trey Foust brought a wet cat through the front door.
More than 36 hours after a fire tore through the building, Foust was able to hand that cat to her owner, Melody Hall, who pulled him in for a big hug.
"Thank you so much," she said. "You don't even know."
Hall was asleep in her second-floor condo right across the hall from where that fire started early Wednesday morning.
She said someone constantly pressing the buzzer of her unit woke her, and she looked outside to see her neighbor trying to break the fire extinguisher window.
"She opened her door just thinking she could run in and probably get something, and when she did all this black smoke was billowing out," Hall said.
Hall knew she had to run, but the buzzer had scared her cat, Kiki, into hiding.
She didn't have time to get her cat, and she worried for more than a day that Kiki had been crushed when the roof collapsed, had burnt in the fire or suffocated from the smoke.
"I really can't talk about that because it's too emotional," she said.
Despite the building being marked condemned and too dangerous to enter, Foust answered Hall's call for help and agreed to search the apartment on Thursday. He said the ceiling had fallen in, and the rooms were heavily damaged by water.
"I checked under beds, couches, that type of stuff, didn't find it. Checked in closets, couldn't find it," Foust said.
Not wanting to leave without having an answer about what happened to Kiki, Foust called Hall from inside her ruined condo to see if she had a common hiding spot.
"It was behind a cedar chest, exactly where the owner said it was," Foust said.
He was on the phone when he spotted Kiki.
"He said, 'Do you want some good news?' I said, 'I'd love some good news.' He said, 'Your cat is alive, and she's looking right at me,'" Hall said.
Kiki was wet and smelled like smoke, but Hall said she was, miraculously, healthy.
Hall said Foust and the firefighters at the Loveland Symmes Fire Department are her heroes.
"They've done a great job, and if he could get a little award, that would be great," Hall said.
Foust said he was just doing what he'd like done for someone he loves by bringing a little positivity in an otherwise tragic time.
Kiki's rescue marked the third cat removed from the complex. Everyone living in the complex escaped the fire unharmed.
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