In the middle of a pandemic, days before Christmas, two frontline workers lost their home to a fire.
Emily Lawerence, an ICU nurse at UCHealth Memorial Central, and her fiance, Christopher Grothey, a 7th-grade language arts teacher at Challenger Middle School in Academy District 20 were out with their dogs when they got a phone call.
“I had a missed call from the fire department and it was a very vague message and so I called them back right away and they told us there was a fire at our house,” says Lawrence.
The two returned to the home they rent to find it nearly destroyed with only a few things salvageable.
“The first thing that went through my mind actually was my late grandfather gave me a gold necklace, and that was the only thing I thought of. The firefighters were actually able to save that necklace. It was sitting on my nightstand completely untouched,” says Lawrence.