Red Cross honors Clearlake couple for rescuing elderly residents from Valley fire

Troy Lunsford will let others decide if what his wife, Lisa, did on the first evening of the hellish Valley fire was truly heroic.

But he knows this: “She just wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer.”

When besieged authorities told Lisa Lunsford on Sept. 12 it wasn’t possible to go into fire areas near Middletown to evacuate two of her in-home care clients, she persisted.

On Thursday, regional American Red Cross officials presented her and her husband a Real Heroes award for rescuing the seniors and for two nights providing them a safe, comforting place to stay.

The Lunsfords, who live in Clearlake, were among 13 Lake, Mendocino and Sonoma county residents honored by the Red Cross for valor or for heroic service to others or to the country, to the community, to animals or to the environment.

Lisa Lunsford, 43, manages the Lakeport office of Sequoia Senior Solutions, which sends assistants into the homes of elderly residents needing a hand.

At the frequently tearful awards breakfast that packed a ballroom at Rohnert Park’s DoubleTree Hotel, Lunsford recalled that as the Lake County wildfire grew fierce late on Sept. 12, she and other employees of the home-care firm worked the phones to make sure none of their clients was in harm’s way.

Dialing a woman in Hidden Valley, she was assured, “I’m OK! I’m just waiting for them to come get me.” The woman, who requires a wheelchair, had no idea an evacuation team had already left her neighborhood.

Lunsford learned also that a client with Alzheimer’s disease who lives near Twin Lakes, south of Lower Lake, had not been evacuated along with her neighbors. Lunsford said she phoned 911 and was told that because of the flames, downed power lines and other hazards, no one could be sent to the two women’s homes.

She persisted, demanding someone accompany her to the residences. At last she was told two off-duty police investigators helping with rescue efforts would escort her.

“It was a team effort,” Lunsford said. As she and the officers ushered the two women from their homes, her husband, a 44-year-old employee of Lake County Parks and Recreation, gathered cots and food and such and readied the Sequoia offices for use as a temporary shelter.

Lisa Lunsford recalled that the woman who uses a wheelchair told her and the officers she absolutely would not leave the house without her two cats. So they gathered them up.

As it turned out, neither of the women’s homes burned. But Lunsford said the woman with the cats suffers from a lung condition and would have been imperiled by the smoke. The second woman might well have been in danger if left alone amid the chaos because of her dementia.

Four people were killed in the Valley fire, including a 72-year-old woman disabled by advanced multiple sclerosis who died in the flames that destroyed her Anderson Springs home.

Officials of the Santa Rosa-based California Northwest chapter of the Red Cross presented both Lunsfords the 2016 Real Heroes “Act of Courage” award for all they did for the two seniors.

The Lunsfords were joined at the awards breakfast, a benefit for the fire-response and other services of the Red Cross, by their children, Breana Gould and Justin Lunsford, and Sequoia Senior Solutions owners Stanton Lawson and Gabriella Ambrosi.