On June 30, 2026, five employees of Bayshore Plumbers were working on a driveway in the 200 block of Willow Road in Menlo Park, California. It was an ordinary job. Then they heard an explosive sound coming from the house next door.
Fredy Garcia and his coworkers — Victor Alanis, Jose Sierra, Ezequiel Garibay, and Anderson Chiti — realized almost immediately what they were looking at: fire, tearing through the house beside them.
They didn’t call it in and wait. They pulled hoses off their own work truck and started spraying water on the flames while someone called 911.
That’s when Garcia heard a voice from inside, screaming: “Hey, can you get my mom out?”
Garcia ran through the burning living room. Inside, he found a 99-year-old woman who could not walk on her own. He carried her out through the back door, along with her caregiver, as the fire continued to spread.
“I was scared, but I was good, and the lady couldn’t walk,” Garcia said afterward.
The whole rescue — from the moment they heard the explosion to the moment the woman was safely outside — took about five minutes. According to Menlo Park Deputy Fire Chief Dan Coyle, the crew “took five minutes off their plumbing job, saved someone’s life, and went back to work.”
On July 21, 2026, the Menlo Park Fire Protection District formally honored all five men — along with company owner Sam Jimenez — for their role in saving the woman’s life.
They didn’t post about it. They didn’t wait for anyone to notice. They just went back to fixing the driveway.
Source: The Almanac, Menlo Park Fire Protection District.
