Tikisha Hobbs and her five children lost all of their belongings and nearly their lives Nov. 28 when their mobile home in Florida went up in flames.
Hobbs sobbed Wednesday while discussing the incident, but the tears weren’t about what her family lost, but rather about what it has gained.
Touched by the family’s misfortune, emergency room staffers at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach teamed up and delivered thousands of dollars worth of household necessities and Christmas gifts to the new home that Hobbs; her husband, Rasheen Norman; and their children, Tikarah, 13; Tamara, 9; Tatianna, 7; Tara, 6; and Kai, 3; moved into last week in Lake Worth.
Some of the same nurses who treated Hobbs and two of her children in the emergency room for smoke inhalation showed up Wednesday loaded down with everything from mops to microwaves to mats.
“I wasn’t expecting all of this,” said Hobbs, whose unfurnished home quickly filled up with gifts. “Just look at this,” she said.
Among those pitching in was Chase Bilbrey, an emergency room nurse at St. Mary’s who was tasked with moving some of bulkier gifts, such as a sofa, into Hobbs’ home.
It was Bilbrey who attended to a despondent Hobbs the night of the fire and assured her that he and his colleagues would take care of her “from beginning to end.”
“We got you,” Bilbrey promised.
Hobbs, 38, said she didn’t know what to think. How could Bilbrey and the other staffers help a large family who had lost everything except the clothes on their backs?
“I was, like, ‘OK, you’re being nice, but I don’t think you understand that I have five kids,’” Hobbs said. “And Chase said, ‘No, we got you.’ And look.”
What has turned into a happy ending could have resulted in massive tragedy if not for 13-year-old Tikarah, an eighth-grader at Lantana Middle School.
Tikarah was awakened by smoke Nov. 28 at about 12:30 a.m. and alerted her mother. Hobbs’ husband was working when the fire broke out.
Tikarah’s heroics weren’t done with the warning to her mother. She managed to get Tatianna, her 7-year-old sister, out of the smoke-filled trailer. Hobbs evacuated the other children and then watched the family’s home burn completely in minutes. The cause of the fire is undetermined.
“We wouldn’t be here,” Hobbs said of the probable outcome if her daughter hadn’t reacted.
With the blaze sparking as they slept, there was no time to save anything but themselves. They were left with the clothes they went to sleep in.
“We didn’t even have shoes,” Hobbs said.
The family may have lacked possessions, but the emergency room staffers at St. Mary’s, both in the adult and pediatric units, were struck by the abundance of politeness and courtesy shown by Hobbs’ children during their brief stay at the hospital.
“We knew exactly what we wanted to do for Christmas,” said Lori Kimmel, a pediatric ER nurse with 14 years of experience at St. Mary’s. “We had to help this family. It was a no-brainer.”
Hobbs’ children were at school Wednesday morning and weren’t home to enjoy the hospital workers’ goodwill. But their mother resembled a child at Christmas, overcome with joy and bursting into tears several times as she opened the gifts.
“It’s truly amazing,” Hobbs said.
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