A young man who recently graduated from high school risked his life to save a wheelchair-bound woman from her burning home in Nampa, a small town near Boise.

He calmly explains that he couldn’t see anything because of the smoke, and yet he not only rescued the woman, he went back into the burning house to get her wheelchair. Amazing!

What an inspiration he is. I commend him and his parents–they’ve obviously raised him well. What a genuine hero he is!

From KTVB:

Around nine o’clock Monday, 18-year-old Tristan Reding was driving near Skyview High School, when he saw flames over nearby rooftops. He arrived in front of a home on South Garland Street, and said he saw a tornado of fire, “There were flames flying probably 100 feet in the air… I just wanted to make sure everybody was out and safe.”

Fire trucks were on their way, but not there, yet. So, he went around back, and that’s when he heard two explosions, which turned out to be oxygen tanks. He also heard screaming. Despite seeing a wall of fire and smoke, he ran in. “I jumped the fence, and I kicked in the back door.”

Tristan couldn’t see anything inside, just black smoke. But, he could hear the wheelchair-bound woman, and that was enough. “When I found her, her hair was singed and her arms were burnt up, and every time I picked her up, she screamed because it hurt so bad. She just kept saying, ‘Help me. Help me. Get me out of here. And, I got her out.”

When asked if he could see anything, he said, “No, just the light to get out the door, barely.”

He then went back and even got her wheelchair out. Neighbors helped Tristan get the woman clear of the fire. He said, “Firefighters were all giving me handshakes, and they were like, ‘You saved somebody’s life today.’ It just didn’t feel real.”

But, it was. Now, everyone from the woman’s family to emergency responders to strangers are calling Tristan a hero. He brushes off the label, and his dad says, he was just being Tristan, “He’ll give you the shirt off his back. He’s just that kind of kid… He just did what he thought he should’ve done.”

The cause of the fire is still under investigation. Incredibly, the woman was released from the hospital Tuesday. Reding was checked out and released Monday night.