"[w]e definitely have angels among us," say the people at W-Underdogs in a Facebook post whose animal shelter caught fire while they were picking up supply donations. A situation that could have ended in the worst way possible ended incredibly positively, and that is because of a heroic 53-year-old homeless man named Keith Walker who ran into the smoking building and saved each and every one of the animals inside.
Walker has been homeless ever since he was 13 years old. He had already known the founder of the shelter, Gracie Hamlin, who had let him keep his dog, a pitbull named Bravo, at the shelter every night. On his way to pick up Bravo from the shelter, Walker saw the fire and ran in, rescuing all of the animals in the shelter - 6 dogs and 10 cats.
"I was nervous as hell, I'm not going to lie. I was really scared to go in there with all that smoke. But God put me there to save those animals," Walker told in a statement to CNN. "If you love a dog, you can love anyone in the world. My dog is my best friend, and I wouldn't be here without him, so I knew I had to save all those other dogs."
Sadly, the W-Underdogs headquarters is now uninhabitable, but in another lucky turn, the shelter was just preparing to move to a different location. As they say in another Facebook post: "As fate would have it, today is the first day of our lease of a new facility we planned to be the new W-Underdogs Headquarters. While the new facility is not exactly 'move-in ready' we were able to move the animals safely into the new facility for the night. They are all happy, warm, safe, and comfortable in their new temporary home."
Hamlin told CNN: "He is my guardian angel. Even the firefighters didn't want to handle the dogs. They called animal control, but Keith was already in the building pulling out the cats and dogs until they were all safe."
We are so, so thankful to Keith Walker and all the people who helped with the rescue and the moving of the animals, and we hope the cats an the dogs will have an easy time getting used to the new place. Good luck in the new year, guys!
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