Cedar Rapids rescuer haunted by neighbor’s death

Every day Ryan Walker grapples with the label “hero.”

He recalls rushing into the burning apartment next door to rescue Ernest Moomey.

He thinks about the day after, the day he learned Moomey had died.

“I believe God put me there at that time for a reason,” said Walker, tugging at a hat pulled down over his face. “I don't know what the reason is because he passed away.”

Moomey, 59, died Oct. 7 of burns received in the fire.

Ever since, Walker, 23, dies inside each time he thinks about it.

“It just keeps getting brought up and brought up, and it just sucks,” Walker said. “I try not to think about it. All I can see is him burnt.”

Moomey's family knows why Walker was there. His brother and sister, Delane Moomey and Eunice Kline, thanked Walker. He gave them one last goodbye.

“It means so much to us that he did what he could,” Delane Moomey said after his brother died.

A hero?

“No,” Walker said. “Actually, it gets really old.”

Still, Walker has been nominated for a national Carnegie Hero Fund award. Reluctantly, he's filling out the paperwork.

“I'm sure a lot of people in my situation would've done the same thing,” he said.

One of those people probably would have been his grandfather, Vernon Carie, who was on the Cedar Rapids Fire Department from 1948 to 1974 and retired as a district chief. The father of Walker's mother, Jacque Walker, Carie died Nov. 14, 2003, at the age of 84.

“He was a great guy,” Walker said. “He was smart as hell, too. He knew everything about anything.”

Maybe the fire rescue is in the genes, but that helps only a little. Walker's had a rough few months.

A second-shift warehouse worker at General Mills, Walker is in the process of divorce. Stress has taken its toll - at 6-foot-5, he's dropped from 225 pounds to 175 pounds. Bills are piling up. He moved out of his apartment Nov. 1 to stay with friends until he can find a place of his own.

“A run of bad luck,” said this believer in fate. “Everything happens for a reason. It'll get better.”

A year ago, Walker moved into Creekside Apartments on 12th Avenue SW. He made some friends, including Casey Lesperance, the daughter-in-law of the apartment manager. When he woke up early on Oct. 7, he went to her apartment for coffee. About 7:15 a.m. she received a call. Somebody smelled smoke. She ran outside. Walker followed.

“It just kind of happened,” he said. “All of it was really fast.”

Smoke filled the apartment. Walker saw a burning bedcover. Everything was hot. A man he didn't know was singed and melting. He grabbed skin that came off in his hands. He took hold of a pair of pants around the waist.

“I picked him up - upside down - and waddled out,” Walker said. “I wanted to get him out without having to go back inside.”

The Fire Department took over. Walker was treated with oxygen at the scene and at St. Luke's Hospital. He was fine, just shaken.

The fire, investigators said, started in a trash can. No smoke alarm beeped a warning.

“I want to set the record straight,” said Walker, explaining that management had replaced smoke-detector batteries throughout the complex just days earlier for fire-safety week. The alarm in Moomey's apartment, he said, must have been intentionally disabled.

Walker rubs his chin, the stubble of a beard, and stares blankly into space.

“I just wish he could have made it,” he said.

When asked, Walker said without hesitation he would “absolutely” do it again, but he feels drained and tired. Sometimes, he thinks, he could sleep for days.

A saving grace has been Moomey's sister, Eunice, who works at the Johnson Avenue Hy-Vee. Walker had seen her before the fire but didn't know there was a connection until afterward.

“Every time I see her,” Walker said, “she gives me a hug and tells me how much she appreciated me.”