INDIANAPOLIS -
Before Saturday night, 73-year-old Bobby Cade and 39-year-old John Melton were strangers, two men who across the hall from one another in the same apartment building, Lake View Terrace Apartments on the city's far east side.
"We just saw each other in passing," Melton said.
By Sunday morning though, Cade was thanking Melton for saving his life after a fire started in Cade's kitchen.
"It's a good thing he was there," said Cade.
Cade told fire crews the fire started just after midnight when he briefly left chicken frying in a pan on the stove to go to his bedroom.
When he came back, Cade said the entire kitchen was on fire.
"It was so fast that I couldn't even see," Cade explained of how quickly the fire spread.
Cade ended up trapped in his bedroom.
"I was shouting out for somebody to call, you know, the fire department," said Cade.
Across the hall from Cade's apartment, John Melton said he heard smoke alarms going off in the hallway.
"I opened the door and I saw smoke," said Melton.
So Melton got out of the building, never realizing 73-year-old Cade was struggling to get his bedroom window open.
"I just got a torn rotator," Cade said of his difficulty getting his bedroom window open.
"I couldn't really, you know, have the strength to pull it up," Cade explained.
Cade said he doesn't remember getting the window open. All he knew though was that he did. When Cade tried to get out though, he got stuck.
"I was stuck up in there and my arm locked up. There wasn't no kind of way I could have got out thru there," said Cade.
"I came out the door and as I was coming out like I said, I noticed the people getting in their cars and leaving," explained Melton of the scene outside the apartment building.
Cade was still hanging out of his first floor window, calling for help as smoke poured out around him.
"Somebody needed to help him out," said Melton.
So that just what the 39-year-old did, getting Cade out through the window, away from the building and finally to safety.
"I feel like I did what somebody needed to do," Melton explained.
Lucky for Bobby Cade,
"That's how I was raised so. I helped him," Melton added.
The generations separating him from a neighbor he didn't know before, didn't matter when it came to getting help from a younger stranger.
"I guess he was raised up the old school way," said Cade, smiling.
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