MESA, Ariz. — The night was dark and the storm was coming.
Gustavo and Veronica Perez had just put their two young children to bed and were starting to unwind, watching TV, when suddenly --
“Out of nowhere,” Gustavo recalls, “the whole house lit up.”
The brilliant flash of light was accompanied by a simultaneous crack of thunder.
Within minutes, Veronica’s phone was ringing and a neighbor was pounding at their door.
A lightning bolt just hit their house, and a fire was burning in their attic.
“I remember saying, ‘My babies!’” Veronica said. “(I) checked their monitor to make sure they were OK.”
The kids were not hurt, despite that fact that the lighting struck just feet away from their youngest’s bedroom. As a matter of fact, the 3-year-old boy didn’t even wake up.
Veronica and Gustavo pulled the kids from their beds, ran them out of the house and into the waiting arms of their neighbors.
“We just grabbed them from where they were sleeping,” Veronica recalled, “in the pouring rain, throwing them at our neighbors and they were there to just catch them! Which I couldn’t be more thankful for.”
It was then that first responders started to arrive. Before they knew it, fire hoses were being staged in the backyard and Mesa firefighters were running hoses up the stairs towards their bedroom.
Through all the chaos, Gustavo and Veronica remember both Mesa police and Mesa firefighters reassuring them the whole time, making sure the Perez’s knew it was going to be OK.
A Mesa Police officer even joked with the Perez’s to keep their spirits up, an act of kindness they won’t forget.
“You know, people say they (first responders) do what they love but that night, Tuesday night, it showed. It really, really showed," Veronica said.
As they tell it: words can’t express their gratitude to both departments and to their neighbors.
In the end, the damage to their house was minimal. Both Veronica and Gustavo know it wasn’t luck that saved their house; it was the tireless efforts of the Mesa Police Department, Mesa Fire and Rescue and their neighbors.
When the fire was extinguished and the firefighters moved on to the next crisis and the neighbors went home, the couple remembered looking at each other and asking, “What just happened?”
