“The road is impassable,” the fire chief warned us. “You’ll never make it.” We’d pulled up next to his firefighting team in a snow of ashes, staring at Highway 39, the only route into the San Gabriel Canyon of Angeles National Forest, 30 miles northeast of L.A.
Thick smoke and bright orange flames roared from the trees beyond. My partner, John, and I, deputies for the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, exchanged glances. “We’ve got no choice,” I muttered. I wheeled our SUV around the roadblock, into the jaws of the fiery beast.
The firefighters had their job to do. We had ours: to save 70-year-old Sigrid Hopson. She lived in a remote cabin in the woods and had stubbornly refused to evacuate. Refused, that is, until the massive forest fire reached her house.
She’d placed a frantic call, begging for help. John and I both knew her. We couldn’t leave her there.
We peered through the soot on the windshield, picking our way through plumes of black smoke and flames that danced across the road. “Watch out!” John shouted. I swerved to avoid a chunk of burning tree that exploded in front of us.
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