Unknown Fire Hero: Santa Rosa Teacher Wants to Thank Man Who Saved Her Life

Update 10:14 a.m. Friday: Big thanks to everyone who helped us locate Donny Riveras as the young man who helped Anna Solano and others escape from Coffey Park the night of the Tubbs Fire. Anna and Donny are in touch!

Anna Solano is one of the thousands of people who escaped their homes in Santa Rosa as wildfire raced into the city early the morning of Oct. 9. Now she wants to find the stranger she says woke her up as danger approached and, in doing so, saved her life.

Images of the stranger — a young man in a white T-shirt, jeans and a baseball cap — were captured by a security camera on Solano’s front porch in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood. The video shows the man frantically rapping on her door and repeatedly calling out, “Hello?”

Behind him, the sky glows orange as the Tubbs Fire draws near. The air is full of smoke and gusts whip a small American flag windsock near Solano’s front walk. Vehicles stream down the street as residents flee.

The young man keeps knocking. Inside the house, Solano’s dog barks.

“He knocked on our door for like a minute and a half until we woke up,” Solano said. “And I left in three minutes. I didn’t take anything, just my dog. I took one car.”

Solano, who teaches math at Roseland University Prep High School, says the last video from her home on Mocha Lane was transmitted at 3:10 a.m. just 40 minutes after the unknown man awakened her.

“I want to find him,” Solano said. “He saved my life. He just kept knocking until we answered. I think he heard the dog barking inside, and that’s why he wouldn’t leave.”

The final images from her home show sparks flying past the front door, and by dawn, the home was one of the thousands of North Bay residences destroyed in the fires. Solano says she managed to get back into Coffey Park the next day and found her home still smoldering.

She says two students from her high school also lost their homes.

“They were in my neighborhood. They were renters. No insurance,” she said. She worries about how they and their families will manage. As for herself, Solano says there has been an outpouring of help from her students.

“I had many students and parents text me and email me. They have been wonderful,” Solano said. “The kids have offered me apartments, they have offered me money, food, they say, ‘Come by!’ They send me their address. It was overwhelming.”

She says right now she’s staying in a small flat belonging to a friend of hers. The friend’s tenant had just left for the Marines, so the place was open. Solano’s border collie, Maisey, isn’t too happy about being cooped up, but Solano is grateful for a place to stay.

And she is intent on finding the young man who saved her, the one in the video.

“I’m going to find him,” she says. “The camera takes pictures, so I have a picture of his face. I’m going to find him.”