'Breathe For Her'

He was the last person who should have run into a burning building—he has lung disease. But that didn’t stop him.

- Claire Nowak

At first, Michael Surrell didn’t see the black smoke or flames shooting from the windows of his neighbors’ home. He and his wife had just parked around the corner from their own house in Allentown, Pennsylvania, when they got a call from one of his daughters: “The house next door is on fire!” He went to investigate. That’s when he saw two women and a girl hysterical on their porch.

“The baby’s in there!” one of the women cried. Though the fire department had been called, Surrell, then 64, instinctively ran inside. “The baby” was 8-year-old Tiara Roberts, the woman’s granddaughter and a playmate of Surrell’s three youngest kids, then 8, 10, and 12. The other two on the porch were Tiara’s aunt and cousin.