Veteran loses home, dogs to Christmas fire

Dec. 31--In the early hours of Christmas morning, Fred Vigil lost everything he had.

A fire, possibly started by a wood burning stove, consumed Vigil's trailer parked off Rabbit Road, just after midnight Sunday. The fire might have taken Vigil, too, were it not for a miraculously timed beer run.

Vigil, 68, was showering, unaware, as the flames spread through his home. Nearby neighbors, celebrating late on the holiday evening, noticed the blaze when one stepped outside to grab beers from a parked car. They leapt into action, broke a window to enter the fiery trailer and pulled a disoriented Vigil to safety.

Meanwhile, Vigil's old photographs, the fatigues he wore in Vietnam and his savings burned to the ground with the rest of his trailer in a matter of minutes.

"All my worldly things," Vigil said. "It's all gone."

Worse, the two beloved dogs that helped Vigil cope with post-traumatic stress disorder -- Paco, a boxer, and Loca, a German shepherd -- did not escape. Because they didn't bark or otherwise react to the fire, they were victims, Vigil believes, of smoke inhalation.

"They were my companions," he said, his voice wavering. "... I don't even know what to think."

The dogs couldn't make it, so Vigil himself wouldn't have had much more time, reasoned his niece, Linda Vigil.

"If he had been in there maybe two minutes more, he probably wouldn't have been able to get out," she said.

Standing over the blackened pit that was his home, Vigil on Friday pointed out where things used to be. A sickly charred smell lingered. The husk of a dishwasher lay on its side amid ashen wreckage, a lone identifiable item in the small field of soot.

"I'm barely coming to grips that it's gone," Vigil said of what has been an agonizing week.

Vigil has suffered from PTSD since his tour in Pleiku, Vietnam, in 1967-68. The fire has aggravated his condition, he said, ravaging him with nightmares of the flames and the crowd of firefighters and people milling about outside his home Sunday morning.

The Veterans Affairs clinic in Albuquerque quickly replenished the prescription medications he lost in the fire, he said. Without their help, he doesn't know where he'd be.

Angel Saenz, Vigil's neighbor, lent another, more immediate helping hand. Saenz said he and six friends were relaxing late Christmas Eve, after Saenz had returned from a holiday dinner in Albuquerque. Only about a half-hour later, he said, one of his friends stepped outside to bring in a few more drinks. When he shouted about the flames, Saenz said, the group ran to assist.

They broke through the window of the trailer door and found Vigil, who had time only to grab a pair of boxers before being rushed outside.

Saenz, 27, said he wished they could have saved Vigil's dogs as well. But, he said, "The good thing is, he's OK."

In the past week, Vigil, a retiree, has stayed with family members spread across town. He didn't have homeowner's insurance, he said, so he didn't merely lose everything: He'll have to start from scratch.

"After almost 70 years, it's devastating. ... Hopefully he can get back on his feet with the help of his community and his family and his friends," said Jaclyn Vigil, a next-door neighbor who is married to Fred Vigil's nephew.

A GoFundMe page, organized by his niece Linda, had crowdsourced more than $4,000 from 63 people as of Thursday evening. The fundraiser goal was $15,000.

"May God bless and comfort you as you rebuild your life," one donor wrote on the page. "So sorry for your loss."

Linda Vigil, 34, said she was marshaling all the community support she could for her uncle, reaching out to businesses for donations or for their help in spreading the word. Still, this holiday week has been a continuous state of shock, she said.

"You never think that something like that would happen to your family," she said. "He has nothing left. He has nothing left."

On his property Friday, Vigil pointed through the branches of a piñon pine up the hill to a green trailer. It's for sale, he said, and he hopes to be able to buy it soon. First, he said, he'll have to clear the blackened ruins from his patch of land. A man from a veterans group, Vigil said, had reached out and offered to help get that done next week.

He might have to rebuild from the bottom, Vigil said, but he's still here, and he's not alone.

"If it wasn't for the people helping me," he said, "I don't know."

Contact Tripp Stelnicki at 505-428-7626 or [email protected].

On the web

--A GoFundMe page for Fred Vigil can be found online at www.gofundme.com/help-fred-vigil-rebuild-his-life.

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