Annette John-Hall: In this crisis, dogs' best friend was a woman

Is it me, or does it seem that ever since Michael Vick came to town, suddenly every news report has an animal-cruelty story? Like nothing was going on before his arrival.

But idiots who duct-tape kittens aren't the norm.

Truth is, most Philadelphians love their pets. We love other people's, too.

Still, I'm not sure how many of us would go to the lengths Fran "Pete" Smith did, risking her own life to save the lives of her neighbor's dogs.

Precious pets trapped in a burning house who would not be here today had it not been for Smith's heroic act and her quick-thinking neighbors.

This is a Philadelphia story about how a compassionate community came together to aid its neighbor.

It was the Friday before Labor Day. Smith, 50, a weatherization inspector for the city's Office of Housing and Community Development, had taken the day off.

She had just walked outside her home that morning when she noticed smoke coming from the home of neighbor Stevie Cunningham.

The thought of a neighbor's house ablaze was bad enough. But Cunningham's wasn't just any house.

The three-story, 20-room Colonial Revival showplace, a featured home on the annual Overbrook Farms Open House Tour, was arguably the jewel of the neighborhood.

Built in 1903 for the "moneyed class" of railroad executives, the stone house was designed by the renowned architect Horace Trumbauer, whose firm also helped produce the Art Museum.

We're talking gabled roofline, a majestic vestibule, original moldings, and tapestry imported from France. You get the idea.

"I spent every penny I have trying to make it look nice while maintaining its historic integrity," says Cunningham, 46, who grew up in the house and purchased it from his parents in 2002.

Cunningham had just left when the fire broke out. But his housemate, Michael Eck, 50, and Cain Nicholls, 14, the son of Cunningham's girlfriend, were home.

So were Nicholls' dogs: Dash, a 6-year-old Cocker spaniel, and a 12-year-old Pomeranian named, of all things, Sparky.

Smith rushed to Cunningham's home, yelling to Eck to cut the circuits. Her work as an inspector taught her that the putrid smell meant an electrical blaze.

She was relieved to see Eck and Cain already out of the house. But then Cain told her his dogs were trapped on the second floor.

As soon as her husband turned his head, the petite Smith, an animal-lover who used to rescue strays as a kid in North Philadelphia, bolted upstairs.

"The smoke was so thick I had to crawl on the floor," Smith remembers. "The door was partially open, so I reached my hand in and pulled Dash out of the house."

Then Cain told her Sparky was in there, too.

"I cursed," Smith admits, "Because I didn't want to go back up there."

Her husband, Kenny, asked the neighbors where his wife was, and they pointed to the burning house.

"I said, 'This crazy woman done went in there and pulled out two dead dogs."

Dash was barely breathing and Sparky was lifeless and limp.

But Smith and neighbor Linda Panetta weren't giving up. They compressed the dogs' chests and tried to revive them by performing CPR.

After a while, Dash started to show signs of recovery. But Sparky was stiffening.

"The little boy kept saying, 'Sparky, you gotta live, you gotta live!' " Smith recalls. "I thought, 'Lord, please don't let this dog die, because this little boy is crying.' "

Thankfully, Sparky slowly came back to life and Panetta rushed the dogs to the vet.

Another neighbor brought a T-shirt for Cain, who'd escaped wearing only shorts. Still another offered up her credit card to pay the $1,500 vet bill.

As we relive the tale in the kitchen of Cunningham's prized house, which sustained considerable fire and water damage, Jennifer Nicholls, Cunningham's girlfriend and Cain's mother, sheds tears of gratitude.

"The vet told us it was just a matter of moments before they would have died," Nicholls says of Sparky and Dash, who are doing fine. "There was just so much community love. I can't believe how so many people helped."

"And this woman," she says, motioning to Smith, a neighbor she knew only in passing, "she went in, not one, but two times. . . . She's definitely a guardian angel."