Palo Alto Firefighters' Pet Project Saves The Day

PALO ALTO, CA — As structure fire incidents go, this one easily qualified as a success story.

Firefighters responded Friday morning at around 5 a.m. to the home of a family of four with two small children and made quick work of a blaze in a detached garage.

The fire was stopped in its tracks before it could reach the home, and nobody was hurt.

That’s how stories like this are supposed to end.

As it turned out, the family had kept its pet hamsters and the children’s art supplies and toys stored in the garage that burned.

Firefighter paramedics Coffelt and Ferguson helped avert catastrophe, but the family they’d just said their goodbyes to was hurting.

The children were “very understandably upset,” the Fire Department wrote on its Facebook page.

Coffelt and Ferguson apparently felt compelled to lift their spirits.

They returned later in the day to present them with a gift: a new guinea pig.

“The family was incredibly touched and we’re pretty sure that we can now count the kids among our fans,” the Fire Department wrote.