California teens playing hooky save elderly woman from fire

If you're going to skip class, make it worth it.

On Monday morning, friends Garen Kissoyan, Peter Kravariotis and Kirill Yantikov, all 17, played hooky.

The senior students at California High School in San Ramon ditched class around 10 a.m. to get something to eat. They were driving to McDonald's when they saw smoke rising from the back of a house.

They found Dianna Davis in the burning home's backyard, calling for help. The boys had just grabbed a garden hose to help fight the fire when they learned that someone was still inside.

"I was turning on the hose, she was on the phone with 911," Kissoyan told NBC Bay Area. "We asked the lady if anyone was in the house at the time — she didn't respond."

Davis eventually told them her 94-year-old mother was inside the house.

Kissoyan and Kravariotis both response with the same instinct:

"Just go in the house, so we did," Kravariotis said.

The teens ran into the burning house to find the elderly woman sitting in a chair. She was covered in soot and suffering from burns.

"There was so much black smoke, and all you could see was flames," Kissoyan told Mercury News. "We couldn't even see the lady. She was covered in ash."

"When we picked up the chair and we grabbed the dog," Kravariotis told NBC Bay Area, "the only thing she said to us was 'I'm on fire,' and it was kind of shocking to me to hear that."

A neighbour, Bob Smith, 76, had already tried to rescue the woman, but the smoke was too thick and he had to leave the house.

"The elderly lady, she would have been gone a minute and a half more," Smith said. "I don't think she could have survived. I went in there and couldn't see my hand in front of my face. It was that bad."

Firefighters arrived soon after. They vented the roof and extinguished the two-alarm blaze in 45 minutes.

The woman is recovering at a burn centre in San Francisco. She remains in critical condition.

The teens, smelling of smoke, returned to class. It wasn't long before they were called into the principal's office.

Mark Corti, the boys' principal, told KTVU that he was very proud of his students.

"[I am] Exceptionally proud of the three young men who would reach out and do something like that because they could’ve easily kept walking," said Corti. "But they saw smoke, moved towards where the fire was and ultimately saved somebody."

Just because they saved a life doesn't mean the three friends completely escaped punishment for skipping class. They will be serving four volunteer hours for the class they ditches, Mercury News reported.

"It's better than them giving us a detention," Kravariotis said. "If that ever happened again, I know we would go into a burning house."

"In a situation like this, the true calibre of your character comes through. I'm not surprised — they are good guys," their teacher, Kathleen Seabury, added.

"They cut class, but at the end of the day things happened for a reason. It was meant to be."