Hero: Mother gives her life for son's

Woman 'a hero,' firefighters say 'She was using her body to shield her son'

Written by Kurt Madar, The Triplicate January 14, 2009 12:00 pm

Victoria Di Silvestro "died a hero," firefighters said Tuesday.

At 5 a.m. Sunday morning a fire caused by a heating mat on a couch broke out in the downstairs of the home she shared with her 6 year-old son in the Pebble Beach Apartments.

Anthony Bookhammer

When firefighters found Di Silvestro, 36, in the thick black smoke they rolled her over to get her out and discovered the boy, Anthony Bookhammer, beneath her.

"She died protecting her son," said Crescent Fire Protection District volunteer Darrin Short. "She was using her body to shield her son."

"They came out of there saying, 'You won't believe this, she was up there shielding her son,'" Short said. "We really want people to know what she did. She died a hero."

Di Silvestro had also held Anthony outside the front upstairs window so that he could breathe air with less smoke and heat while she was stuck inside, Short said.

When flames burst from below and drove them back in, Short said that she did the only thing she could, "she covered him with her own body and burned to death. In 19 years I have never done or seen anything close to that level of bravery."

When Crescent City Volunteer Fire Department duty chief Michael Knight arrived on the scene at 5:44 a.m., Di Silvestro and her son Anthony were at a second-story window directly above the fire.

His report provides the following details.

"She was yelling, 'Help me, help us get out,'" Knight wrote.

At this point the first engine was not on scene yet and there was no way into the building due to the downstairs being engulfed in fire, Knight wrote.

After a California Highway Patrol officer broke a window in the apartment next door and opened the front door, Knight attempted to go upstairs in the adjacent apartment to try and pull Di Silvestro and Anthony from the burning second story onto the outside ledge.

"As I entered the upstairs bedroom the officers started yelling 'get out.'" Knight wrote. "I came back to the head of the stairwell and saw fire going across the top of the doorway. I put my head down, tried to stay as low as I could, and ran out of the apartment."

As Knight got outside, he saw that the window where Di Silvestro and Anthony had been standing was also on fire. Flames from the bottom floor of the structure were flaring up and entering the second floor through where they had been.

The Fire Truck 1 crew of Crescent City Fire arrived and after running a hose line, firefighters were able to beat down the flames enough to get access to the second floor. After fighting fires in the front and back bedrooms they discovered Di Silvestro and her son near the front window.

Anthony was removed from the apartment first. Di Silvestro had no vital signs at the scene, Knight wrote.

Both were transported in an ambulance, Di Silvestro receiving chest compressions. Di Silvestro was declared dead at Sutter Coast Hospital and Anthony was flown to a burn center in Portland, where he remains in stable but critical condition.

Di Silvestro, originally of Sacramento, lived in Crescent City for the last eight years, her aunt, Chris Tyron, said Tuesday.

"She was a great mother, very protective of that little boy," Tyron said. "He was her life."

Di Silvestro is survived by two other children who live in Oklahoma and a large extended family in Sacramento.

"There were 12 of us siblings," her aunt said tearfully.

The family hopes to eventually get Anthony moved to the burn unit at the Sacramento Shriners Children Hospital, Tyron said.

Di Silvestro's mother, Lina Tyron, said in a telephone interview from Portland that Anthony's lungs and inner organs were in good shape.

"He is still in the intensive care unit," she said. "They just put him on dialysis today."

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