Neighbor rescues woman from burning home

Sonya Padgett

Wednesday, June 2, 1999 | 10:51 a.m.

Gregory Schuler, 56, thinks he was just being a good neighbor this morning when he backed his truck up in the driveway of a house on Garden Grove, tied a nylon rope to the security door and pulled it open, rescuing a trapped woman from her flame-engulfed home.

But Clark County Fire department spokesman Steven La-Sky said Schuler's actions in the neighborhood near Rainbow Boulevard and Flamingo Road were heroic.

"He definitely did a great deed. The fire crews that were there insisted that he saved the woman's life," La-Sky said. The woman, whose name was not released, wasn't injured and is resting comfortably at a neighbor's home, La-Sky said.

Six units responded to the fire at 5:30 a.m., which was caused by carelessly discarded smoking materials, La-Sky said.

Security bars on the doors and windows, designed to keep people out, had the owner of the home trapped inside as the fire quickly spread.

The fire department's heavy rescue team was on its way, but weren't needed because Schuler had done the job for them, La-Sky said.

Schuler, a truck driver for Wells Fargo, was on his way to work when he saw the plumes of smoke in his neighborhood.

"I was pulling out of my cul-de-sac and I could see lots of thick, black smoke. A couple of kids going to school ran over and said a woman was trapped inside her house," Schuler said.

That's when he decided to do something. After making sure 9-1-1 had been called, Schuler backed his 1973 Chevy truck up to the iron security gate and saw the woman crouched by the door, unable to get out. He double-tied an orange and black nylon rope to the bumper and her door and pulled forward. The bars bent just enough to allow the woman to escape.

Schuler said he wasn't scared or nervous as he worked in the thick smoke.

"In times of emergency you just do what you have to do. Anybody would do what (I did)," he said. "Thank God I had a sturdy rope."

Two dogs escaped with the woman, but a cat and bird died in the fire. The damage is estimated a $100,000, La-Sky said.