STILWELL, Okla. - A woman is struggling to piece her life back together after a fire took everything she had including family heirlooms hundreds of years old.
"A pair of slippers, a pair of sweats and my jammy shirt, and my dogs and my birds and that was it," said Stilwell resident Regina Richards.
That was it.
"It was pretty much just a big ball of fire. The whole house was completely involved in fire," said Assistant Chief Casey Baker of the Tahlequah Fire Department whose men responded to the Welling Fire Department's call for help.
Richards remembers the only things she could escape high flames and treacherous black smoke with.
"It was awful watching it burn was - with my whole life in there," Richards cried.
Starting to go blind, she said she only cared to own the things that matter.
"My antique bedroom set was my great, great grandparents', it was purchased in 1684."
Now having lost what matters because of what she calls a power surge through an electric fireplace.
"They're not even replaceable. I can buy new furniture but it's not the same."
From far away the home now just looks like a frame.
But getting closer, it's remnants of a life she's now forced to miss.
"Half the time I don't even want to get out of bed."
Her community is working to stand behind her; praying for her and trying to get her clothes, even donating the shoes on her feet.
"Until you've been there you won't even know."
But like the figurine that mysteriously survived, hidden among rubble and destruction, she's chipped but not destroyed.
Learn how you can help Regina here.
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