A Mobile Division employee rescued a 4-year-old girl from a burning house Easter morning on his way to church.

Alabama Power employee and Tensaw Pastor Leo Campbell is joined by his wife Suporior Campbell. He was stopped on his way to church to help rescue a young girl.

Leo Campbell climbed through a window of the house after he and other passersby were flagged down by Valarie Bridges, the mother of the child whose house caught fire after flames from a hot grill on the back deck she was cooking on got out of control.

The frantic woman couldn’t get into the house where the child was trapped alone. She ran into the street screaming “my baby’s inside,” which caught Campbell’s attention. The first two men to stop went into the house through a front window, but couldn’t find the child and were driven back out by the intense flames and smoke.

Campbell, Power Delivery Distribution crew foreman – Michigan Avenue Complex, was on his way to preach at his church in Tensaw when he pulled over to help. The men lifted him through a side window. The smoke was so thick that he asked for a shirt to place over his face. Another bystander gave him a water bottle to wet the shirt. Campbell tried several times to find little Simone Floyd, only to be forced back by the thick smoke.

Campbell says he kept coming to the window to get air, and someone on the outside told him to come out and leave the job to the fire department, but he refused to go back outside without Simone.

“Someone told me before I found her, ‘The fire department is on the way, come on out,’” Campbell said. “And I said no.  I’m not coming out without her.”

Campbell visited Simone Floyd after she was released from the hospital (pictured here with her mother Valarie Bridges).

Holding out hope

Giving it one last try after receiving a cellphone for light, Campbell heard the child moaning and found her stretched out on the floor. He picked her up and handed her to the men at the window, who gave the girl – with black foam coming from her mouth – to a nurse who’d also stopped at the house.

Campbell and his wife visited Simone Easter night in the hospital. The child was released Monday. Bridges was told by fire department officials if the child had stayed in the house two minutes longer, she would have died.

“Sometimes we ask ourselves what will happen to me if I stop, instead of asking what will happen to the people if I do not stop,” Campbell said.

Campbell said he couldn’t have saved her without the help of all the others who were impelled to stop.

“It took all of us, and I think that it was such a great message to happen on such an awesome day, that all of us came together for this little girl,” Campbell said.