She remembers, too, the man in uniform who came to her rescue.

About midnight on Sept. 22, Trooper Jake Strong of the Michigan State Police-Alpena Post entered Smith’s burning home as Smith struggled to move her husband, who was on hospice care.

The trooper got the couple safely out of the home, a wall of smoke following behind them.

Last week, the state recognized Strong with a Citation of Bravery award for his life-saving actions.

Courtesy Photo The burned bedroom of Spruce resident Randy Smith appears in this courtesy photo provided by Trooper Jake Strong of the Michigan State Police-Alpena Post.

Strong doesn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

“I don’t think any of us do the job for the potential of praise or recognition,” the officer said on Thursday, pausing to reflect on the rescue during his first visit to Smith’s house since the fire. “The people who do this job just want to help people.”

A workman’s tools and freshly-installed trim evidenced the ongoing renovations in Smith’s home as she stood in her kitchen on Thursday, describing the night of the fire.

She had just settled in for the night, she said, when she heard unusual sounds from the monitor near her bed.

The device let her keep tabs on her husband as he slept in the mud room-turned-bedroom that extended from the opposite side of the house. The room off of the kitchen had become his whole world since a debilitating sickness limited his mobility a few years ago, Smith said.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Spruce resident Rhonda Smith, right, hugs Trooper Jake Strong, who rescued Smith and her husband from a house fire in September.

She headed to the kitchen to check on the noise. Instantly, she could see flames flaring outside the sliding glass door on the far wall of her husband’s bedroom.

Smith called 911 and then set to work waking her husband.

The sleeping medication he took made it hard to rouse him, and the toxins produced by his medical condition left him easily confused. When Smith finally shook her husband awake, he was more interested in watching the fire than in escaping from it, she said.

Smith didn’t have time to be afraid for herself, she said, but only wondered how she was going to save her husband as smoke began to creep into the room and flames licked the window.

“And, about that time, he came through the door,” Smith said on Thursday, gesturing toward the police officer who stood in her kitchen.

Strong was headed home at the end of his shift when his radio alerted him to the fire.

Taking the back roads instead of his usual route, he had passed Smith’s house only minutes before, noticing nothing out of the ordinary. Speeding back to the scene, he didn’t have to look for house numbers, because flames now lit up the house, he recounted.

Strong left his car on the road and ran through the yard. Two walls of the side room were covered in flames.

“I saw there was a perfectly good door over there,” Strong said, pointing to the home’s unscarred front door, far from where the fire had started. “For some reason I ran closer to the fire. I’m not really sure why I did that.”

On the other side of that fire, Smith struggled to get her husband out of bed.

When the trooper burst into the dark room, “The first thing he said was, ‘Police! Call out!'” Smith remembers.

“Right here!” she hollered back at him.

Strong’s police-officer voice finally got her husband moving, Smith said. Together they shuffle-sped him and his walker out of the room, smoke clawing after them and making the trooper cough.

Strong considered picking the man up and carrying him out of the house, but a catheter tube tied around the walker made that impractical.

While Strong helped the couple through the house, Alcona County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrived at the front door and helped the husband with his walker down the front steps.

Strong lingered for several hours as firefighters fought the flames that ultimately destroyed the room and the bed where Smith’s husband had slept.

Only later did Smith realize how differently things could have turned out.

“If, if, if,” she said. “If I hadn’t had the monitor. If he hadn’t taken a different route home. Somebody was watching after us that night.”

The fire may have started from a stray cigarette or from chimney creosote falling onto a smoker or a grill on the porch, insurance adjusters told Smith.

Her husband, Randy Smith, died ten days after the fire from his long-term illness.

Randy Smith spent his last days at a hunting camp, thinking hunting season was just ahead and unaware the fire had claimed part of his home, his wife believes.

She has hired someone to rebuild his room, where she will hang one of her husband’s mounted deer heads, salvaged from the fire.

When news of the rescue reached local and state media in September, Strong was shocked by the phone calls and emails congratulating him on his swift action, the officer said.

“Police just want to help people,” he said. “Every once in a while you have a chance to help somebody a lot. Those are the ones that keep you coming back.”

Police do what needs to be done, following their instincts first, even if it means going far beyond their usual job descriptions, he said.

“I was driving home after I left here, and I was like, ‘You know, there’s probably a lot of ways that could have gone really, really bad,'” Strong said. “I’m glad it didn’t.”

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jriddleX.

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