Lady Welcomes Homeless Man Into Her Home. Days Later, He Barges Into Her Room & Saves Her Life

Illustration - Agent Penguin/Shutterstock

From the archives: This story was last updated in March 2019.

A kind woman in Houston opened her home for a homeless man who needed a place to sleep. She invited him to live in her house with herself and her two young granddaughters. A few days later, the man urgently barged into the woman’s bedroom at around 1:30 a.m.—an emergency was at hand.

The then-66-year-old woman met her longtime friend Thomas Smith and found he had become homeless. So she invited him to live in her house near Dieppe Street and Kasserine Pass in Houston, Texas.

A few days later, after staying in the spare bedroom of his friend’s home, Smith was awoken suddenly in the middle of the night. He heard a loud blast and quickly got out of bed.

Illustration - Gemenacom/Shutterstock

When he saw a fire starting to break out in the attic, Smith hurried to his friend’s bedroom in order to wake her up and rush her out of the house to safety. But what he saw was startling—his friend was lying on her bed still asleep, but was covered by fallen debris.

“I jumped out the bed and ran to her room, and something was on top of her—sheetrock and what not,” he told KPRC2. “I told her, ‘Get up out the bed!’”

Smith freed his friend from the debris and brought her outside. Then, he quickly ran back to the burning house to get his friend’s granddaughters, then aged 8 and 10, who were sleeping in a room nearby.

While everything in the house was almost destroyed, the whole family made it out unhurt.

Firefighters think the fire was likely caused by an electrical fault and that it started in the laundry room. While her home of over 40 years was extensively damaged and her granddaughters almost lost everything, the woman was thankful that Smith was in her life at just the right time and was willing to put his life in danger to save her and her granddaughters.

Smith claims no heroism and still remains completely thankful for the home that his friend and her granddaughters had provided for him. He said that his friend is the hero for having opened up her home to him a few days before.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a hero,” he told KHOU. “I just thank God for helping us all. Not a hero.”

The woman probably never would’ve expected that her one kind deed of helping Smith stay in her home during his time of need would end up saving the lives of both her granddaughters, and herself.

Though this incident occurred in 2016, it emphasizes the principle that kindness always pays back.

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