Girl saves grandmother

Zelma Broadwater and her 9-year-old granddaughter Lynsie Grogan were going to sit on the porch by the fire, sip hot chocolate and watch it rain April 9.

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But events turned tragic when Broadwater's jacket brushed the candle she was using to start the fire in her chimney.

Lynsie first noticed that her grandmother's clothes were on fire and helped her pull the burning jacket off.

"She started jumping up and down screaming, 'Take it off, take it off, your clothes are on fire!' She snatched my jacket off, I started pulling off my clothes and it was going up my back. I didn't even know I was on fire," Broadwater said.

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Lynsie, a Westmont Elementary School third-grader, then tended her grandmother's wounds until help arrived to take her to the emergency room. She filled a bowl and a bag with ice and water - the bag to apply to the wounds on her grandmother's back, the bowl for her grandmother to immerse her burned arm.

"I just know when it hurts really bad, I put ice on my head or put ice on my bumps," Lynsie said.

Broadwater suffered first-, second- and third-degree burns on her left hand, back and right arm.

"If it hadn't been for her, it would have been very tragic," said the 65-year-old Hillcrest Drive resident, who has nicknamed Lynsie her "guardian angel." "She was the hero that saved her grandmother from burning."