NORTH WILKESBORO
Jason Norman was on his way to work when he saw the fire and the smoke billowing from the house.
He stopped his car and spoke to a woman who was sitting in the road holding a baby.
Her parents were still inside, she told him.
Shortly before 7 a.m. Monday, an emergency call had gone out that two people were trapped inside a burning house on Peden Street. Firefighters arrived quickly and found that the two people had already been rescued.
Initially, fire officials weren't sure of the rescuer's name.
But it was Norman, who happened to be driving by -- about 20 minutes earlier than when he usually goes to work.
When the woman told him that her mother was in the house in a hospital bed at a front window, he rushed up the handicap ramp and kicked in the front door, but the smoke drove him back.
He asked the woman if she were sure where her mother was. She was sure, she said. Her mother can't walk because of health problems, she told him.
Norman pulled his coat over his head and went back in, dropping to the floor, groping through the blinding smoke. He crawled, feeling for the bed.
He pulled Linda Call, 61, out of the room and through the front door just as an explosion rocked the hall. He got her across the street.
But he knew that there would be no way to save the man because of the fire that erupted after the explosion.
"I thought he was going to die," Norman said.
But someone, he's not sure who, maybe a neighbor, yelled that the man was at an open window.
Norman, who is 6 feet 3 inches tall, reached up with another man to help William Call, 54, out of the window and get him away from the house. Call also can't walk because of his health problems.
Firefighters arrived soon after.
Linda Call was in critical condition yesterday at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem. Her husband was treated there and released.
After the rescue, Norman called his bosses at Scott Brothers Heating and Air in Fleetwood to say that he was going to be late because something had come up.
But he started coughing, and he felt as though taking a breath was killing him. He wound up in the emergency room at Wilkes Regional Medical Center, where he was treated for smoke inhalation.
His bosses told him to stay out of work that day, but he needed to give them some tools for his job installing heating systems.
The company's installation manager, Mike Carter, drove from Ashe County to meet him beside U.S. 421.
Carter is more than Norman's boss. As pastor of Orion Baptist Church in Jefferson, Carter baptized Norman and Norman's wife, Kandace, this summer.
Beside U.S. 421, they prayed together, for the people in the fire and for Norman's own health. Norman, 28, has been going to Baptist for treatment of an atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm.
Carter said he thought all week about what Norman did.
"His own personal safety, he overruled and went in there to help somebody," Carter said. "That's what we're here to do is help one another. That's defining what Christ did for us."
Norman, who lives in the Rock Creek area of Wilkes County, with Kandace and their daughters, Kaylee, 6, and Savannah, 18 months, went home to his family the day of the fire. The next day, he peeled away the melted vinyl that had dripped from the house onto his work jacket and went back to work.
He has been trying to reach the family, and he hopes to visit the Calls this weekend. Yesterday, he and Kaylee stopped by the house.
The strong smell of smoke was in the air beyond the yellow fire tape.
When the fire was shooting out of the house, Norman had to decide what to do. He knew that he couldn't stand there and watch someone die.
"I stopped and did what I should have done," he said. "It's not about anything else. It could have been my girls or my wife or my family. My parents."
mmitchell@wsjournal.com | 667-5691
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