We rarely stop to acknowledge that at any given moment on any given day, each of us could become the victim of a violent crime or freak accident. But should the worst happen, the best we can hope for is to have a good Samaritan on hand to help—someone like thirty-one-year-old Brandon Page. A Slog tipper alerted me to the fact that on Saturday, July 14, Page worked to save not one but two people during a chain of events that is both freakish and strikingly heroic. Here's his story:

Page, a server at Oddfellows Cafe + Bar on Capitol Hill, was working the closing shift on Saturday when he and several coworkers heard gunfire on 10th Avenue. The time was around 3:00 a.m.

"The shots were so close, I ran out to see what was going on," remembers Page, who also volunteers for the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility. He noticed a man lying on the ground in the street in front of the Rancho Bravo parking lot. Page ordered his coworkers to call 911 and approached the man. There, he found a 19-year-old, later identified as Tilahun M. Alemayehu, bleeding from three gunshot wounds to his abdomen. Having been trained in first aid (and acknowledging that he collects "old medical textbooks for light reading"), Page staunched the man's bleeding as best he could and kept him awake until paramedics arrived.

"I remember trying to get him to tell me his name, to reassure him that an ambulance was on its way, to make sure he didn't move," Page recalls. It felt like the ambulance took forever, he says. Eventually, he noticed police standing over him, gently insisting that he let the paramedics take over.

Page was covered in blood, shaken, exhausted. His coworkers kindly called his boyfriend to pick him up and take him home to the unit they shared in the six-story, beautifully shabby Biltmore Apartments.

It was around 4:00 a.m. Page ran a hot shower. His partner ran back to their car, and on his way back to the couple's apartment, he noticed an unusual smell in their hallway: smoke.

"The smell was so strong, it was alarming," Page says. "We began walking up and down our hall, checking every door for heat and smoke." Page eventually located the source—a neighboring unit with smoke slowly pouring out from beneath the door. He knocked but got no response. So he kept knocking, louder and louder, until he heard a toilet flush. Eventually, he says, a very drunk woman answered the door. "The smoke was so thick you couldn't see your hands in front of you," says Page.

He gathered up the drunk woman and her two cats and got them out of the building. Like many a very drunk person who came before her and will surely follow, Page learned that she'd fallen asleep with a pizza in the oven. Making a dangerous situation even more dangerous, Page says that the woman's unit didn't have a smoke detector and its window was painted shut. (Bill, a manager at the Biltmore, says that all 130 units have working smoke detectors and that the building's hallways also have working smoke alarms, although "they don't always have batteries that are replaced on time, I will admit that.")

"I was sort of at the end of my rope when I pulled her out," Page says. "I kept impressing upon her how stupid it was, that it was a dumb thing and it could've killed us all. I told her that she should be really angry that she doesn't have a smoke detector and her window doesn't open." Page and his partner turned off the oven and left one of their fans in the unit to help ventilate her apartment.

The following day, Page says his neighbor apologized for nearly burning down the Biltmore. (Incidentally, Page reported the Biltmore's management to the Better Business Bureau and has resolved to move.)

And, grateful for the role Page played in the aftermath of the shooting, Alemayehu's family brought Page and his coworkers flowers at work. Last Wednesday, Page visited the 19-year-old, who was still on life support at Harborview. The Seattle Times reported that on Thursday, Alemayehu succumbed to his injuries. Condolences to his family, who can at least grieve knowing that Page and his coworkers, on top of first responders and Harborview staff, did everything they could to safe his life.