Alert Neighbor Rescues Woman From Fire

Manuel Andrade knew something was wrong Wednesday morning when he walked outside and noticed that his 87-year-old neighbor, Leon Benish, wasn’t at her normal front-patio perch puffing on a cigarette.

He knocked on her front door and, smelling smoke, yelled at the frail Alzheimer’s disease patient to get out. But she didn’t answer.

Andrade, 77, entered the house, and pulled Benish to safety just as a fire was burning inside the wall of her tiny, Spanish-style house in Santa Ana.

“I’m old, but I know how to take her out of the house,” Andrade said. “I just take care of her. I’m not a hero. I just do what I have to do.”

Neighbors have been keeping an eye on Benish since her husband died about a decade ago. Her strict routine is to start the day with a few cigarettes on the front porch, where she greets friends with a hearty smile, they said.

“If she’s not there, then I go knock at the door to make sure she’s OK,” Andrade said.

Fire officials believe a fallen cigarette caused the fire, which was fueled by heavy Santa Ana winds. The fire consumed a wall and entered the attic, causing about $10,000 in damage.

Firefighters arrived at the house in the 200 block of North Wright Street about 8:48 a.m. Seeing smoke coming from air ducts in the ceiling, firefighters looked in the attic and found that the fire had been burning inside a wall near the front of the house. A charred cigarette butt was found between a gap in the wall and the front patio, officials said.

“She regularly sits out and smokes on the patio and flicks her ashes into the grass, but today, one [ash] flipped and ignited,” Santa Ana Fire Capt. Chris Esser said. “If [Andrade] hadn’t gotten her out, she could have been in trouble. It was a responsible and caring act.”

Benish’s 46-year-old grandson, Tony Dunn, arrived at the scene soon after the fire started and attempted to calm his grandmother at a neighbor’s house.

“She didn’t know what was going on,” he said. “Thank God Mr. Andrade was around. It’s nice to know there are other people out there [who] care about them.”

The wall in the house will be rebuilt so that Benish can continue living there, Dunn said.

Dunn, who has known Andrade since he was a child, said: “He’s just a neat guy. If it hadn’t been for him, the whole house would have gone down and Grandma with it.”