Our Story

March 13, 2022 – We were watching our nephew while his parents were out of town, and went to pick him up from a playdate at his friend's house, about 20min away. We are friends with the family, so we were invited to stay for dinner before heading back to our house to pick up our dogs, Carmella, Mack, & BoRogan, for a sleepover at Erica’s sister’s house because our nephew had school the next day. We got back in the truck to head to our house, & that’s when our world was flipped upside down.

We both left our phones in the truck, so we had missed calls from our 1 neighbor (we only have 1 nearby neighbor on our country road), & our parents. I called our neighbor right back thinking that we left a door open & maybe a dog was outside, and all she said was “Are you home? Are you in your house?” & when I said “No”, she said “OH THANK GOD. Chantelle, your house is on fire, its gone”. All Erica & I could reply with was “What do you mean, it's gone?! It can’t be gone!? The animals are inside, get the animals!” To which we were told, “I’m so sorry guys, it's gone”.

We sped back to our house to find it completely engulfed, with firefighters everywhere trying to get the flames under control. We don’t remember much from that night other than begging them to please just get our babies out of the house. They were right in the front room that was closest to where the firefighters were all standing outside of the structure.  Nobody was entering the house & nobody was finding them. Once the firefighters did enter the house, they said that they did not see any animals anywhere, which was odd because typically they will find the animals at a door or window trying to escape.

We had wishful thinking that they had gotten out and spent the rest of the night trying to call for them in the field of slush & snow around our house, returning in the morning determined to find them. My brother, a Marine on leave just before the final deployment of his career, had just arrived in Corning, NY, after driving from San Antonio with his wife, 4 children, and all of their pets. When he heard about our fire, he drove the 2.5 hours from Corning to be with us that night & in the following days. The fire department deemed the house too dangerous to enter & walk around in (also giving us no insight into what exactly happened), so he took a ladder & was looking through the 2nd-floor windows and moving rubble as safely as he could. He found our puppy underneath where our bed had been. Erica is a volunteer firefighter, and the next day, her old fire hall brought their truck out & did a sweep of the house & were able to recover Mack’s body. He was on the landing outside of our bedroom door, where he slept at his post every night, guarding his pack. The 3rd day after the fire, Erica was determined to find Carmella, so she searched the 1st & 2nd floor herself and was finally able to locate our Carmella at the foot of where our bed was, in our bedroom with Bo, protected by Mack at the door. There had been a gate separating the rooms where the dogs had been & their access to upstairs, and we are sure that Mack knocked through this gate to give them the route up the stairs to the safest place they could get to. We were never able to locate Theo, & some days, we still have hope that he could have escaped, but have been told it is not likely, even though cats do manage to get themselves out of crazy predicaments.

The grief & healing journey from all of this has been like nothing we have ever experienced, both separately/personally, & together as a team. We have had ups & downs, but one thing that we have always agreed on is that we will not let our furbabies’ legacies be in vain. We are in the process of building this nonprofit to help other people who have suffered an unexpected tragedy like us. We want to educate as many people as we can about fire prevention & safety, as well as provide resources for “what happens next” when unforeseen devastation becomes someone’s reality.