Say what you will about teens these days. Some say they are self-centered, obsessed with their phones, and lack respect… and that may be true of some here and there.
But some teens are brave and more heroic than some adults.
Take these four teenage boys from Sapulpa, Oklahoma who saved a 90-year-old woman from a burning house fire for example. These teens didn’t hesitate to risk their lives to save this woman.
Catherine Ritchie was about to get into bed for the night when she turned around to find her entire bed engulfed in flames.
The flames were as tall as 3-feet high when she tried to put them out with some blankets
But that didn’t help at all. So, she pressed the emergency call button she wears around her neck and tried to exit her room. However, the thick smoke prevented her from doing so at first.
“The smoke was so bad, I couldn’t see to get out of my room,” Ritchie told KTUL. “I felt along the wall, and I went into the closet instead of the door to get out of the room. I finally did get to the door.”
Meanwhile, four teenage boys —Nick Byrd, 14, Seth Byrd, 16, Dylan Wick 16, and Wyatt Hall, 17—were leaving a house across the street.
They were going to the convenient store when they smelled burning rubber. They looked up to see smoke and flames coming from Ritchie’s house
One of the teens went to call 911, another ran to a neighbor’s house to get an ax while brothers Seth and Nick tried to force their way into the house.
Nick was able to kick in the door and was the first to make it inside.
“I just kind of heard her,” Nick told KTUL. “I went to the right of the house and no one was there. I went to the left of the house, and I saw her in the hallway, so I just grabbed her.”
He and his brother Seth quickly escorted Ritchie out of the house to safety. Ritchie says she was grateful that the boys were there that night.
“That’s what I have to think,” said Ritchie. “They were just special, as young as they were.”
The boys stayed with Ritchie and consoled her until her family was able to arrive. Ritchie, who still volunteers at the Salvation Army, Boys and Girls Club, and Meals on Wheels, has 10 children and 42 grandchildren.
One of Ritchie’s daughter’s Missy Ritchie Nicholas wrote a lengthy blog post profusely thanking the young teens for their bravery and putting themselves on the line to save her mother.
“Kids who are told about all the things they aren’t old enough to do saved the life of the most precious and beloved woman we know. Courageous young men. Young men who risked their own lives, their own safety, perhaps their good standing with their parents who might have chosen for them to do otherwise, and they carried my mother out of her burning home into the street, where fire trucks and ambulances would soon arrive,” she wrote.
“Thank you for your selfless acts of heroism and courage. Thank you for not allowing this to be the tragic end to our mother’s amazing life. Thank you for staying with her, hugging her, and helping her feel less alone until we could get to her. Thank you for being the kind of young men who thought about another person above yourselves.”
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