Kids Rescued From Fire Return Home

SPOKANE VALLEY — Two children rescued from an apartment fire earlier this week returned home from the hospital on Friday and their mom couldn’t be any happier.

Just two days ago Tristan and Trinity’s mom, Crystal Flagg, wasn’t sure if she would ever see her children on the jungle gym or playing in the park.

On Tuesday night a fire filled Flagg’s apartment up with smoke. She tried to save her kids but couldn’t get to their room; two neighbors rushed into the apartment and saved the kids, who were taken to the intensive care unit with smoke inhalation.

She was in the shower when she heard the smoke alarm go off. Crystal rushed to her son’s room but couldn’t get inside.

“I was frantic, all I was thinking was I can’t lose my children if I lose my children i lose myself,” she said. “I was banging on the door and trying to get it open and it wouldn’t open. I later learned from Jon Tristan laying in front of the door and that’s why I couldn’t get in.”

Crystal’s friend pulled her from the apartment just as two neighbors – Jon Higginson and Alex Suchanek – were scaling the second floor balcony to rescue her kids.

Higginson and Suchanek found Trinity in her crib and Tristan in his room and brought them out of the apartment to safety.

“I owe them my family and everything without them I don’t know where I’d be right now so guys thank you very much,” Crystal said of her neighbors Jon and Alex.

She’s also thankful because her six-year-old son, whose room was destroyed by the fire, was away at camp Tuesday night when the fire broke out.

While Crystal lost nearly everything in the fire except that which means the most to her: Her children.

“They both have a little cough, a little wheezing, that’s about it,” she said. “They’re playing, eating, just being themselves.”