Pioneer Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. — “Whatever happened to Daundre?” wondered a St. Paul firefighter who rescued a 4-year-old boy from an inferno 25 years ago.
Daundre Ashworth, now 29, had been longing to know the same thing about a now retired Capt. Don Kosen.
On Saturday, the two met in St. Paul. Ashworth greeted Kosen, 76, with a hug and told him, “Thank you, thank you for saving my life.”
It was a day of gratitude and reunions. In an unrelated case, a woman who a St. Paul police officer saved as a toddler when she was gasping for air and turning blue, also arranged a meeting Saturday. They saw each other for the first time in 56 years.
“My gratitude grows each day for the gift of being here,” said Jan Vandermey, just before she met retired St. Paul police Sgt. John “Jack” R. Voita.
Saved from a fire
In the fire, Kosen could not see through the smoke or find anyone, then he heard someone crying. Kosen crawled toward the sound, blindly grasping about, until he touched a child -- it was Daundre.
The fire on Aug. 9, 1990, was one of five suspicious fires in the same East Side neighborhood in the early morning hours. Kosen’s fire crew had been called to one and put it out. They were returning to their station downtown on that “clear, quiet night, when we noticed an unusual amount of smoke,” which they followed, Kosen said.
They found a duplex ablaze on Minnehaha Avenue, not far from Edgerton Street. A woman was hysterical in the yard, hollering there were children inside.
Kosen climbed a ladder to the second floor and found no one, then learned Daundre was in the next room over.
“I could see nothing -- I just knew he was crying,” said Kosen, 76, of Lakeland. The firefighters later learned Daundre’s brother and sister had made it out safely at that point.
Daundre had inhaled too much smoke and was rushed to the hospital, where Kosen said he was told the boy “probably had 15 to 20 seconds of life left in him when I found him.”
“When I made the rescue, I gave my credit to God -- I figured I was used as his instrument to bring Daundre out of the fire,” Kosen said. “I always figured God had a reason for it.”
Kosen received accolades, including the Congressional Award for Heroism.
When he retired from the fire department in 1998 after 35 years of service, Daundre was one of three people Kosen rescued from fires. Two survived.
“Normally, you do your job, go home and don’t know what happens to the people you serve,” Kosen said, but he found himself thinking about the little boy. He looked for Daundre in the phone book once or twice, not knowing the boy -- whose last name had been Ward -- had a new surname.
Daundre Ashworth had gone into foster care, become a ward of the state and lived in group homes, said Matt Ashworth. He and his wife adopted Daundre when he was 17. They were by his side as he met Kosen Saturday.
“Daundre said, ‘I always wanted to meet that firefighter who saved my life,’ ” said Patience Robinson, who works at the St. Paul group home where Ashworth lives. It’s run by the Volunteers of America and provides services to people with various disabilities.
Robinson went online and searched for Kosen. She found his phone number, called Kosen and they arranged the meeting.
The Saturday gathering was made even more emotional by mementos Kosen brought along.
Daundre and his adoptive family have no photos of him as a young child, and they got to see what he looked like when Kosen showed them video clips of local news coverage of the fire and of the boy at an award ceremony.
Kosen gave the family a DVD of the video clips, along with a childhood photo of Daundre and his siblings from the award ceremony.
“He’s been talking about you most of his life,” Matt Ashworth told Kosen, before Daundre again embraced the man who’d saved him.
Trying to breathe
For Jan Vandermey, it was “a strong spiritual push” that led her to meet the man who rescued her.
“My inner voice was saying, ‘Now is the time, before it’s too late,’ ” she said.
Vandermey was 18 months old in September 1959 when she began gasping for air. Her family thought she was choking on a broken toy, but later discovered she had swallowed lighter fluid.
“My parents usually kept it in the garage, but a neighbor borrowed it and put it on the kitchen table,” Vandermey said. “Somehow I got a whole mouthful of it.” Her airway then swelled shut.
Officers Leonard Mersch and John R. Voita responded to the call for help on Bush Avenue, near Earl Street.
It was before the city had paramedics. Police knew first aid and transported patients in a station wagon with a stretcher in back, said Voita, 82, of Amery, Wis., who retired after more than 40 years as a St. Paul officer.
Voita remembers holding the toddler and putting his finger down her throat in an attempt to open her airway.
“I moved my finger back and forth to see if she could suck in some air, and I remember the pain in my finger -- she bit my finger and broke the skin,” Voita said.
Vandermey spent 25 days in St. Joseph’s Hospital. She said she had severe pneumonia from the caustic fumes and sustained minor brain damage from the lack of oxygen.
In 1978, Vandermey sent thank you letters to the officers. Voita called Vandermey then and they chatted. But “I was not even 20 and it didn’t dawn on me that I could say, ‘I’d really like to meet you,’ ” Vandermey said.
Vandermey searched online recently for the men. Mersch died in 2005, but she quickly found Voita’s phone number.
At Saturday’s meeting, Vandermey brought a card she’d made for him. It included photos of herself through the years. “These are the days that happened because you saved me,” she said.
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