Cindy Schuenke screamed as she fell into the fire and watched, horrified, as flames engulfed her left hand, lighting it like a match and melting her flesh.

Her right boot smashed through debris in the basement, trapping her foot. She slammed backward onto a live electrical wire that sparked and wriggled on the wet concrete floor. The wire jolted her, scorching her back and arm through her protective coat.

She jerked to one side and stretched her hand beneath her back to toss the wire away.

She slowed her breathing to keep her air tank from emptying.

She listened for sounds of a rescue. But through her protective hood, she heard only the popping of flames. And through her blackening mask, she saw only fire.

———

Schuenke wasn't even supposed to be working that day. After finishing her shift at Engine House 3 in St. Ann, she drove to Community Fire Protection District Engine House 1 in Overland to cover for a coworker. The call came in almost immediately.

At the one-story, two-bedroom brick bungalow in Vinita Terrace, thick, dark smoke churned into the sky. A man pleaded for help. The mother of Community Fire Capt. Vaughn Rooks was inside.

There's a rule in firefighting: Risk a lot to save a lot; risk a little to save a little; risk nothing to save nothing. Some felt the fire was too intense, the smoke too thick, for there to be a life to save.

But the incident commander, Ken Corbin of the Mid-County Fire Protection District, knew that someone was inside and that she was a firefighter's mother.

They were going in.

———

Schuenke and her partner, Tom "Bubba" Yahnke, followed two Normandy firefighters into the house. Three or four minutes later, the floor bounced, then gave way beneath Schuenke. She wrapped one arm around a hose and groped for a solid section of floor. Intense heat shot up from the basement.

She couldn't pull herself out. She didn't have a radio;there wasn't one on the pumper. She couldn't reach her alarm.

A firefighter stepped inside, and the floor caved in further.

The only way out was down. Schuenke glimpsed a window in the basement. She thought she might be able to get to it.

Meanwhile, a University City firefighter spied Geneva Rooks' body through a window. Twice he tried to reach her but couldn't. Her body would have to wait.

———

Yahnke spotted hands and light coming from a hole.

"Cindy!" he yelled. "Give me your hand!"

She knew he'd never be able to pull her up because the floor was wedged against her tank. "I'm trapped! Get help! Tell them the fire's in the basement!" she shouted.

Yahnke grabbed her left hand. Schuenke's glove began to slip, exposing her wrist.

"I've got her!" Yahnke shouted to Normandy firefighter Jim Ebert, behind him.

"Her?" Ebert wondered, confused. "Vaughn's mother?"

Ebert grabbed Yahnke and pulled. Another firefighter yanked at Yahnke's back. Nothing helped.

Ebert knew the fire and smoke were too much for anyone not wearing gear. If Yahnke had Geneva Rooks, no way was she alive.

"Bubba!" Ebert shouted. "We're gonna die in here! We gotta let her go! She's dead! She's dead!"

Schuenke couldn't believe what she was hearing. "Dead?"

"I'm not leaving you!" Yahnke yelled.

Schuenke screamed. "My wrist is burning!"

The voice stunned Ebert. That wasn't the sound of an older woman.

———

Schuenke couldn't hold on. When her left hand slipped from her glove, she dropped, leaving Yahnke holding the glove and screaming bloody murder.

"We've gotta go, Bub!" Ebert shouted.

The firefighters wore 30-minute tanks, but exertion and adrenaline whittle down the minutes. They'd been inside less than 10 minutes, but Ebert's bells were shrieking. He bolted for a window.

Yahnke crawled to a window and pulled himself out.

Community Firefighter Joe Waddell rushed to Yahnke.

"She's dead!" said Yahnke. "She fell into the basement!"

Waddell leaped to his feet and called over the radio for hoses. "She's in the basement!" he said.

Schuenke's boyfriend and fellow firefighter, Marc Schulz, ran to Yahnke.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Yahnke cried to Schulz. "She's dead."

———

As flames formed a tunnel around her, Schuenke considered removing her mask. The pain was too much.

Then she heard Schulz.

"Cindy! Where are you?"

Through her charred mask, she saw slivers of light. The window. She had to get to it.

She tugged at her bunker pants to free her trapped foot but couldn't get a grip. Desperate, she pulled off her remaining glove. She gripped her pants and yanked, then pulled her foot from her boot. And ran.

She bolted through flames and across scorching embers to the window, then scrambled onto a white chair underneath it.

Heat had blown out the glass, leaving shards in every direction. She pulled herself partway out. But her tank got stuck in the frame.

She screamed.

"Help me! I'm alive! I'm over here! Please, somebody, please!"

Around the corner came Waddell. He grabbed Schuenke's arms and yanked.

Schuenke felt as if she were still on fire. Her body was scarlet from steam and heat. Her hands were burned and bloodied. She desperately wanted the pain to stop, but she didn't want to lose consciousness. What if they amputated her hands and foot while she was out? What if she didn't wake up at all?

She wanted her mom.

When Marolyn Schuenke arrived at St. John's Mercy Medical Center, she couldn't take her eyes off the rubbery yellow-green strips that hung from her daughter's hands and arms.

"Are those Cindy's gloves?" she asked a nurse.

"No," the nurse said. "That's Cindy's skin."

———

The damage was severe. The doctors said she might lose her hands, her foot.

"I do not want to lose anything," she told anyone who'd listen.

Over the next few weeks, surgeons shaved off her dead skin in layers. They covered her wounds with cadaver skin, then with her own skin painfully cut from her thighs and hip area.

She suffered a blood clot, staph infection, pneumonia, pleurisy.

Surgeons sliced off the tips of her fingers, where the skin had turned black and died.

They amputated the little finger on her left hand.

———

Schulz plastered a wall of Schuenke's hospital room with photos of her family, of the two of them on vacation, of friends who had come to visit. He changed the scenes. One week, there was a picture of her house, then her pool.

He wanted her to see all that she still had.

Many times, she saw only what she had lost.

A worker came to bleach her room one day and asked who the pretty blonde on the wall was.

"That's me," she said.

"That ain't you," he answered.

Schuenke started to cry. "It used to be," she said.

———

Almost two months after the fire, deep wounds on Schuenke's left hand — the hand that had slipped from her glove — weren't healing. She had lost the little finger and was determined to keep the rest of her hand intact. Otherwise, how would she be able to return to work?

Her doctors gave her a choice: amputation or surgery to sew her hand inside her abdomen.

She chose surgery.

Dr. Jonathan Pollack and Dr. Peter Rumbolo sliced into her abdomen and lifted a flap of skin, as if opening a book. Under the flap, they tucked her hand and sewed it in place. To keep it from being dislodged, they sewed Schuenke's arm to her side. They hoped the flap would grow into place around her fingers.

Almost three weeks later, doctors cut her hand and its new skin from her abdomen. Schuenke had something resembling fingers — albeit chubby, pink ones — again.

After 98 days in the hospital, Schuenke went home on July 4, 2006.

She needed people to take her places, change her bandages, help her use the bathroom.

Her misshapen hands lacked strength and a grip. Scars from her burns, skin grafts and surgeries covered her feet, legs, abdomen, hands and arms.

When she looked in the mirror she no longer saw the pretty, proud firefighter in her yearbook photo.

And she had so many questions about the fire. "Why did we go in? Why did I have to save myself? Why didn't they come get me?"

Flashbacks of the fire played over and over in her mind.

"I wish I could wake up and it never happened," she said. "I want this over with."

A few weeks later, while still heavily medicated with narcotics and sedatives, she agreed to a TV interview. The camera showed Schuenke with spiky hair, in tears, her voice cracking.

"Nobody came back to help me or anything," she told a KSDK (Channel 5) reporter. "I was there alone. I heard them say, 'There's nothing we can do. She's going to die.' And the man that tried to help me thought I was dead down there. I was yelling, 'Please, somebody help me! I'm on fire, but I'm alive, I'm alive!' …

"I got out on my own and nobody helped me."

———

Some firefighters found Schuenke's words — and a hint of a lawsuit — blasphemous.

"Nobody left her behind," said Ebert, the Normandy firefighter. "We would never leave her there, and we did everything we possibly could. But when it comes down to it, we've got to get out. … Is it smart to kill yourself? You can't help if you're going to sit there and die."

At a union meeting, Danny Laws — Schuenke's friend and a longtime Creve Coeur firefighter — stood up for Schuenke. He'd heard some firefighters were bad-mouthing her.

"Don't talk behind her back," Laws warned. "She needs people to call and say, 'Cindy, how are things going? Are you doing OK?' … This can happen to any of us at any time. Do not turn your back on your brothers and sisters."

The message helped, but there was still some backlash. About three months later, Schuenke was awarded a gold medal of valor, making her the most decorated female firefighter St. Louis County ever had.

After the ceremony, a stranger approached — but not bearing congratulations.

"You caused a lot of grief," the woman said. "You'll rot in hell one day."

———

In December, months after Law's stern words and the stranger's condemnation, Schuenke decided to address her peers. She'd been through a dozen surgeries and months of painful rehabilitation, and she wanted to thank the firefighters who had helped — even though she knew some wouldn't be happy to see her.

She was terrified. There were hundreds of firefighters at the union hall. Would they glare? Would they boo?

Schuenke's pulse raced as she walked toward the podium. She hung her head, not wanting to make eye contact.

Then her ears filled with applause. She snapped her head back in disbelief. They were on their feet.

"We love you, Cindy!" someone bellowed.

In tears, she thanked them — for their visits, the flowers, for helping her family through those long weeks at the hospital.

After the meeting, an elderly man grabbed her hand.

"You are a miracle," he said. "Of all these hundreds of firefighters in this room, God chose you. He's got a mission for you. He knew you could handle this."

As of this month, Schuenke, now 43, has been through 16 surgeries with the ever-present possibility of amputation. Dr. Michael Smock, director of the burn division at St. John's, suggested it as recently as June.

Schuenke would hear none of it.

On Sept. 11, she woke up determined to talk him into even more surgeries — surgeries she hoped would make her hands flexible.

But by the time she arrived at his office, her eyes were red, her face pink and puffy from crying. She signed in half an hour late for her appointment and burst into tears before she could escape to the hall.

"All I ever wanted to be was a firefighter and a paramedic," she wailed as a nurse consoled her and burn patients in the waiting room lowered their heads.

Schuenke had just learned that the Community Fire District had asked for a letter from her doctor to determine whether she was capable of returning to work.

She had believed a job would be waiting for her. Did this mean they were going to let her go? And if they put her on disability, would she be allowed to work as a firefighter-paramedic ever again?

The doctor's letter described her injuries as devastating. It suggested an educational or administrative role.

It wasn't a summary Schuenke wanted to read, certainly not one she wanted her doctor — or anyone — to believe.

———

Schuenke had surprised her doctor before with what she could do.

Her wrist wasn't supposed to bend. But she could bend it.

Her hands were expected to work merely as scoops. But she could grab things. She'd even pinched Smock to prove it.

There were things she still couldn't do: pick up a dime, twist open a bottle of water, drive.

But she wanted a chance to try.

She wanted to be a firefighter-paramedic again.

"Do you really think you can work as a firefighter?" the doctor asked in their visit.

"Hell, yeah," Schuenke answered. "Why do you think I continue to have surgeries?"

By the end of the visit, Smock said he would write another letter, one asking the district to detail the tasks Schuenke's job required. He would address her potential to complete the tasks, one by one.

And he scheduled two more surgeries: one Thursday, to work on her left hand, and Oct. 22, to work on the right.

"Is there anything else I can do?" he asked.

"Yeah," Schuenke replied as she lifted her left, most severely damaged hand. "Give me five fingers and my skin back."

The doctor smiled. Schuenke had astonished him time and time again with her determination to mend herself, and her life.

He wasn't surprised by the request.

———

Editor's note — Cindy Schuenke's attorney, Chet Pleban, has filed complaints with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Missouri Commission on Human Rights alleging that the Community Fire District outfitted Schuenke with oversized (men's) gloves, a factor in the burns she suffered on her left hand and wrist.

About this story

Information for this story was compiled from dozens of interviews with firefighters, fire and other officials, witnesses, medical personnel, family and friends, and fire, police, land and other records.



eholland@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8259