"We smelled something, we just thought it was the air conditioner and we laid back down. But then, it wasn't time for her to wake up, and she woke up screaming," said Kim Garcia.
She's just six days old and already, baby Ja'lissa is the Garcia family's tiny hero.
At 2 a.m. Wednesday, it was her burning eyes and red face that signaled to the family something was very wrong.
"By the time he [Johnny] got the light on, her face was so red and then he opened the attic door and it hit him," Kim said.
Billowing from the attic was heavy smoke, sparked suddenly by electrical wiring as the family of seven slept soundly.
"It's really scary because the baby was in the back room with us and when you wake up to something burning like that...you just never know what's going to happen," said father Johnny Garcia.
On the same day Kim gave birth to baby Ja'lissa, the family's cat also celebrated new life.
"The baby and the kittens were all born on the same day," a family friend said. "They all survived."
While the family now mourns the damages in their home, in the moment of chaos, Grandma Shirley Sutton had wise words to live by.
"Everybody got out of the house, everybody's okay, and that's the main thing," she said. "You can replace things but you can't replace a life."
The Red Cross is helping the Garcia's with food, money for clothes and diapers and a place to stay while their damaged home is fixed.
Fire crews told the family that if they had noticed the smoke just a half hour later, it may have been too late, because the carbon monoxide levels in the home were reaching deadly levels.
She's just six days old and already, baby Ja'lissa is the Garcia family's tiny hero.
At 2 a.m. Wednesday, it was her burning eyes and red face that signaled to the family something was very wrong.
"By the time he [Johnny] got the light on, her face was so red and then he opened the attic door and it hit him," Kim said.
Billowing from the attic was heavy smoke, sparked suddenly by electrical wiring as the family of seven slept soundly.
"It's really scary because the baby was in the back room with us and when you wake up to something burning like that...you just never know what's going to happen," said father Johnny Garcia.
On the same day Kim gave birth to baby Ja'lissa, the family's cat also celebrated new life.
"The baby and the kittens were all born on the same day," a family friend said. "They all survived."
While the family now mourns the damages in their home, in the moment of chaos, Grandma Shirley Sutton had wise words to live by.
"Everybody got out of the house, everybody's okay, and that's the main thing," she said. "You can replace things but you can't replace a life."
The Red Cross is helping the Garcia's with food, money for clothes and diapers and a place to stay while their damaged home is fixed.
Fire crews told the family that if they had noticed the smoke just a half hour later, it may have been too late, because the carbon monoxide levels in the home were reaching deadly levels.
