Going above and beyond

A hunting show on television may have averted disaster for Vi Williams.

It was before 6 p.m. on Dec. 22, and her neighbor, Harold Shuman, was plunked in front of the television, avoiding getting ready for a Christmas party that evening. A hunting show was on TV, and he resolved to finish the program before leaving his house.

He didn’t know that next door, a fire had started.

Shuman finally switched off the program and trundled his wife into the car. Across the fence, he could hear his neighbor shouting. He shrugged it off. Vi Williams often called for her dog, Toby, a puppy her daughter had given her a few months back.

But her cries turned to shouts for help – and screams that her home was on fire.

Shuman pounded through the fence separating his property from his neighbor’s, “and lo and behold, the house was on fire,” he recalled.

Williams, 82, was alone at her home at 9070 Driftwood Drive in Coeur d’Alene. And she was inside, searching for her lost puppy.

Shuman, who has 30 years of firefighting experience with the Forest Service, entered the house, located a pile of burning clothes and tossed them outside. He shepherded Williams outdoors and went hunting for a fire extinguisher to put out the flames.

But Williams was distraught, searching for her dog. She went inside a second time. Again, Shuman brought her back out.

She found a different entrance, determined to locate her puppy.

By that time the kitchen was consumed by flames.

“The third time I took her out and told her a little story about the dog” escaping the fire, said Shuman, 62. Both he and Williams escaped without injury.

Williams had no concern for her own safety, he said.

“She would have stayed in there looking for that little dog. She had no concept of what was going on around her. She was oblivious to the situation,” Shuman said. “If I hadn’t taken her out of there, yes, she would have perished. I know that for a fact.”

Williams’ family agrees that Shuman saved her life.

“Her whole focus was on her dog, Toby. She wouldn’t be here,” said Linda Mattos, Williams’s daughter. “We just can’t thank him enough.”

Kootenai County Fire and Rescue responded to the fire, but the two-story, roughly 2,200-square-foot home and an attached garage were a total loss.

Clothes set too close to an electric wall heater started the fire, the firefighters said. The neighboring homes sustained some heat damage, including the melting of vinyl siding on one and a broken window on another.

Williams and her husband, Jim, built the home along the Spokane River and lived there for nearly 30 years, Mattos said. The house was packed with antiques from a store Vi Williams previously owned.

“Everything was smoke and ash,” said Mattos, of Post Falls. “You sit there and you think about it, and you don’t realize until later on all the different things that are gone.”

But her mother only cared about the puppy, a schnauzer-poodle mix, Mattos said. She had given Williams the dog a few months ago to replace a 16-year-old schnauzer that had been put down because of health problems.

“She didn’t care about any of it, if she could have had the dog. That was her hardest thing to deal with,” Mattos said.

Toby died in the fire. During the blaze, a neighbor from across the street, Jody Barden, attempted to save the dog, scrambling into the home and calling for it, Mattos said. He was deterred by an explosion of a gas stove.

Williams has not been back to the see the gutted house since the fire, Mattos said. She still struggles to talk about the incident.

“She can still hear it, smell it, taste it,” Mattos said.

Next month, Kootenai County Fire and Rescue will honor Shuman with an award, said Jim Lyon, spokesman for the department.

“It’s basically a recognition for a community member for actions that went above and beyond to essentially save another neighbor,” Lyon said.

Shuman shrugs off the praise.

“Really, I felt like I was doing what I had to do,” Shuman said. “I don’t feel like a hero. I felt like I did what I had to do for anybody.”

The award is well-deserved, Mattos said. She’s grateful her mother and stepfather lived in a neighborhood where people look out for one another, she said.

“It’s kind of like old times where people really cared for each other. Life gets so complicated at times, you don’t see that as often,” Mattos said. “I was so thankful that Harold was home.”