Sunday, May 9, 1999
IN CELEBRATION OF MOM/MOTHER, SON SHARE HERO'S BOND
Henry Frederick
The Daytona Beach News-Journal
STAFF WRITER
DAYTONA BEACH — A 12-year-old boy who has been called a hero said he wouldn't hesitate to run into a burning building again if his mother were inside.
Nobody would question his wisdom after hearing his explanation for such action.
"I love my mom," Zachary Thomas Raley said with a determined look that showed through the burns he suffered in the rescue attempt.
"She's there for me all the time," he said, pressing a bandage under his shirt.
This Mother's Day has special meaning for Zachary and his mom, Jeannette Hillegas: He's alive.
"I love him to death," she said during a recent visit with him at Silver Sands Middle School in Port Orange, where he is a sixth-grader.
He's on the mend from critical burns that ravaged the upper part of his body in a Feb. 24 house fire.
"He's 95 percent healed," said his mother, who was pleased her son had improved enough to come home after more than two months of treatment at Shriner's Hospital in Cincinnati.
Home these days is a tiny efficiency apartment until Hillegas can save up enough money to rent a decent-size apartment or home for her and the children Zachary and Tamara, 13.
Fortunately for the family, the Shriner's Hospital has picked up the medical tab.
The family also has received $3,000 in donations, thanks mostly to fund-raisers run by Silver Sands school officials and Zachary's classmates.
Three of those classmates Matt Figueroa, Cameron Richards and Dominique Simmons collected nearly $1,000 by soliciting extra lunch money from other students and from one of the boys' churches.
"All three of them just demonstrated genuine concern," said Silver Sands Principal Marta Busse.
She said the classmates asked her every day for medical updates on Zachary.
"He's like my best friend and I really care about him," Matt explained. "If he would die, that would be real sad on everybody's part because he's a nice kid."
Death was eerily close to Zachary the night he ran back into his burning home at 2113 Mitchell Lane, an isolated neighborhood off Tomoka Farms Road.
A smoldering log in the fireplace thought to be put out when the family members went to bed flared up and raced along the chimney to the walls.
Tamara was the first to scream. Zachary got his sister out of the house and then went back for his mother and dog, Magic.
What the boy didn't know was that his mother had gotten out safely.
Zachary was overcome by smoke and fell to the floor in the kitchen as flames shot through the roof, according to neighbors and firefighters at the time.
Zachary's mother ran inside after her son.
"I crawled on my belly," she recalled with tears. "I couldn't see anything and I had a hard time breathing with all the smoke. I felt his foot and I dragged him out of the house."
Outside Zachary's skin came of his hands in sheets.
The other critical burns were from his right elbow to shoulder and along his back and neck. Lesser burns were on his face.
For weeks, Zachary had nightmares and often asked aloud in the hospital bed, "Why me?"
His mother stayed with him day and night. His sister wrote letters.
The nighmares have become less frequent for Zachary, who has dreams of someday being an artist.
He doesn't cry over his burns and has learned to live with the pressurized bandages and a plastic neck brace he must wear for the next several months to allow skin grafts to heal. He'll also undergo several skin snippings before adult age as he grows because of scar tissue buildup.
What brought Zachary to tears was that his beloved dog, Magic, a pit bull chow mix, had perished in the flames.
The Halifax Humane Society gave Zachary a certificate for a new puppy once his family finds permanent housing.
Zachary has to deal with permanent itching, which is soothed by cream and prescribed medication.
Most importantly, he's alive, back in school and moving on with his life. "He's a hero to all who know him -- he's a brave boy," Busse said.
Zachary, his mother added, is the kind of boy "any mother would be proud of."
*Contributions to the Zachary Raley Fund can be made at any SouthTrust Bank branch.
Serial story: THE MOUSE AND THE MOTORCYCLE