74-year-old Greg Spike was on his daily jog when he saw a second floor hotel balcony engulfed in flames.
Spike was pacing his way through a running trail near the Willamette River in Eugene, Oregon, when he noticed the three-alarm fire at the Valley River Inn, and took out his phone to film it as he jogged past.
He was startled when he heard Stacy Barkley crying for help from the balcony of the adjacent hotel room.
“I said, get out of there, get out of there, get out of there! And she said I cant, I can’t, there’s smoke in the hallway,” he told KVAL.
Barkley and her husband, Donald, flew in to the state to visit their son and pregnant daughter-in-law.
She was watching television and crafting in her hotel room while Donald was out in Eugene with his sister, when she heard the fire alarm go off.
Barkley opened the door to exit, but the hallway was filled with smoke and she was afraid of getting disoriented in the thick haze.
She called Donald and he told her to put a towel under the door and try to escape out the balcony, but was forced back into the room when the heat of the fire next door nearly burned her.
That’s when Spike stepped in to save her. “He didn’t even hesitate – he ran right over,” she told USA TODAY.
Spike instructed her to hang off of the balcony and he would catch her. “I said, ‘Come on, hit me, hit me,’” he detailed. “I was trying to tell her I would break her fall.”
Barkley lowered herself as much as possible before letting go. “He just said ‘jump,’ so I did, and he was there to save me,” she recalled.
He led Barkley away from the burning building and instructed her to take deep breaths through the face mask she was wearing.
She was overcome with gratitude an engulfed her everyday hero into a hug. “Oh my God, you saved me,” Barkley could be heard telling him on the video.
Shortly after, she was reunited with her husband and sister-in-law. As soon as they arrived, Spike scampered off to continue his jog.
“They said oh my god, oh my god, you saved my life! You saved my life, you saved her life, you know. And I ran off,” he said.
Spike got a few bruised ribs from the heroic endeavor, but said the incident took more of a mental toll because it reminded him of the time he spent fighting in Vietnam when he was in the Army.
“Last night, I couldn’t go to sleep because I kept going back there,” he told a reporter.
Barkley is grateful that Spike bravely answered her call for help.
“It’s hard to thank someone that saved you in that way, but he didn’t hesitate to answer my plea for help,” she remarked. “It was very kind of him.”
