The following has been excerpted from the Daily News:
Cop saves 6 from fire
He runs into senior-citizen complex to rescue grandma, returns 5 more times
By G.W. MILLER III
millerg@phillynews.com
As he waited for his coffee at the drive-through window of Dunkin’ Donuts early Thanksgiving morning, off-duty police officer Rudy Muller watched as fire engines drove past him, sirens blaring.
Then, he saw the fire trucks pull into the driveway of the nearby Ephraim Goldstein Apartment complex, on Bustleton Avenue near Somerton in the Far Northeast.
“My grandmother lives over there,” he thought to himself.
Then, he jumped into action.
Muller drove to the scene, ran into the burning six-story building, crawled down a smoke-filled hallway and found his frightened grandmother sitting in the dark.
“I didn’t know what was happening,” said Marie Raffa, Muller’s 92-year-old grandmother. “I feared it was the end.”
Muller, 34, picked her up, draped her over his shoulder, ran down three flights of stairs and delivered her to safety.
While firefighters battled the blaze and tended to the 300 panicked residents of the home for low-income seniors, Muller ran back into the building and grabbed another person.
After carrying that person to safety, Muller ran up and got another. And then another.
When the smoke cleared, Muller had rescued at least six, including one man in a wheelchair, said Eric Naftulin, the apartment complex’s executive director.
“Without his actions, we may have had fatalities,” Naftulin said. “By the grace of God, he was nearby when the fire broke out.”
Muller spent the next 24 hours in the intensive-care unit of Holy Redeemer Hospital due to smoke exposure.
Two residents and the building superintendent also were hospitalized with minor injuries. Three police officers – Joe Walker, Mike Heston and Thomas Miles – who helped evacuate residents were treated for smoke inhalation and released.
“This gives me a whole new respect for firefighters,” said Muller, whose family didn’t get to celebrate Thanksgiving.
Fire Department officials said a heating unit sparked the blaze. One apartment was gutted, and 16 others were severely damaged.
Raffa, who is partially deaf and has poor eyesight, is living with her daughter until her unit can be repaired.
“What is amazing about this,” said Muller’s younger brother, Rich, “is that, on the day we all give thanks, someone made the ultimate sacrifice to risk his life to save people who are less fortunate.”
Rudy Muller, an officer in the district attorney’s homicide unit, joined the Philadelphia police in 1997, after serving as an officer in Bucks County and as a Philadelphia Housing Authority cop.
He said the firefighters and the fire paramedics were the real heroes.
But this was not Muller’s first rescue.
On Christmas Eve in 2000, he pulled a woman from a burning building on Drake Drive near Chalfont in the Northeast.
Then, he went back and retrieved her dog.
“He’s a remarkable guy,” said Naftulin, who has known Muller since childhood.
Muller said he just happened to be in the right place at the right time.
“It all started because I went to get a cup of coffee,” he laughed.