Twenty-three years ago, a firefighter rushed into a burning home in Poughkeepsie with two young brothers inside. One of them died in the fire but the 3-year-old brother was rescued, and he reunited with the man who saved him over the weekend for the first time.
William Porter is now retired and that little boy, Jacob Tsukroff, is now 26 years old. In a meeting arranged by Porter's daughter, the former Arlington Fire Department firefighter embraced with Tsukroff at the Poughkeepsie Elks Club on Sunday, LoHud first reported. They had only one brief exchange since that life-altering fire but Porter said the incident left an impact on him.
"It was one of the biggest calls that stuck in my mind, one that had never really had closure to it. I always wondered how he was," Porter said. Before Porter retired two months ago, on the anniversary of the fire, his daughter Jessica Scalamandre wanted to give her father that closure so she tracked Tsukroff down.