25 years later, firefighter reunites with boy he saved
In his room at the Ashland group home, Daundre Ashworth surrounds himself with the things he most treasures.
"That's my high school jacket," he says, pointing to his graduation photo. Nearby stand Daundre's trophies from adapted soccer and basketball.
But there's another memento he treasures even more.
"Yeah," says Daundre, pointing to a grainy photocopy from a 25-year-old newspaper clipping he keeps in an album. "He's my hero."
For Daundre, 29, the clipping is a connection to a man he has no recollection meeting, but has spent his life worshipping.
"I'm alive right now," says Daundre, pointing to the stamp-sized newspaper picture of a St. Paul firefighter. "He's the reason."
Over the years Daundre has shared the story, countless times, of the firefighter who crawled into the burning apartment to save him - just four-years-old at the time.
Patience Robinson first heard the story when she started working at the group home.
"He brings the article and I read it," she recalls, "and I'm like 'Oh my God."
Then Patience listened as Daundre spoke of the firefighter who had become larger than life in his mind. "And he just really wanted to thank him, he just really wanted to see him and thank him," says Patience.
"I said, 'Well, let's see if we can find him.'" Then Patience went online and did exactly that.
Turns out fire captain Don Kosen – retired and living in Lakeland - had also been keeping some mementos from Daundre's rescue, including the same newspaper clipping from 25 years ago.
Seated at his dining room table, Don opens the album and begins to tell the story.
"An arsonist started setting fires on the east side of St. Paul," he says, still a look of concern in the retired firefighter's eyes.
Don and other members of his fire company had responded to one of those overnight fires and were on their way back to the station when they noticed smoke in the air and followed it to Daundre's burning home.
Don climbed a ladder to the second floor and entered the apartment through a window.
"I crawled down the hallway," he says, "crawling on my hands and knees."
Don felt the floors and walls, cloaked in total darkness as he crawled from one room to the next.
"And then I heard him - crawled a little bit further and I felt him - Daundre, he was crying."
Daundre continued to cry as Don grabbed him, no sweeter music to a firefighter. Daundre was alive.
The rescue earned Don commendations from the city and an award for heroism from the United States Congress.
But years later, it would also leave him wondering, what had become of the little boy he rescued?
"I always felt it's God working through me to save his child. So what was the purpose that he used me in saving his child and what did that child become," say Don.
On a fall Saturday, Don was about to find out.
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