and the guy in the middle burned his drivers licens.

AND THE GUY IN THE MIDDLE BURNED HIS DRIVERS LICENS. HOW TO

The kids had ridden Big Wheels on the hardwood floors and finger-painted on the walls. The Kiefers painted all the rooms, refurbished everything, new hot water heater, new air-conditioning, and the dream house slowly became a dream home. Regrouping after the devastating 2018 Camp fire, the Paradise High School Bobcats football team became a powerful symbol of a community coming together after unthinkable adversity. Three bedrooms, two and a half baths, on a half acre, with a wraparound porch. They had lived in their home seventeen years. He ran inside and grabbed a trash bag, filled it with photos and medicine, threw it in the truck, then helped his father hook up a trailer to Greg’s truck. Spencer drove against traffic, trying to ignore the gridlock headed in the other direction, and finally pulled into their ash-filled driveway. Greg was recovering from back surgery and would need some help. He immediately jumped in the truck and raced home to his father. Then principal Lauren Lighthall came out to tell everyone to go home. So Spencer wasn’t that worried until, while sitting with friends on his truck in the parking lot on the morning of November 8, dark blotches began falling from the sky. After school, he would return to the Ford, put on his uniform next to the truck bed, then hang out there until it was time to run down to Om Wraith Field and knock the snot out of someone. He liked rolling that big truck into the parking lot and pulling up next to his teammates and hanging out before class.

AND THE GUY IN THE MIDDLE BURNED HIS DRIVERS LICENS. HOW TO

But he still knew how to drive, and he knew the directions to the high school, and what else mattered?

Growing up on a quiet street in Paradise, there weren’t many places to go. His father had given him an aging Ford F-150 pickup truck as a present. He was still a kid, but he was becoming a man. Spencer had calmly shrugged at the warnings and left the house like it was any other day. “He’s already gone to school,” Greg said. “Don’t even try to get back to the house you’ll never make it,” Greg told her. Their daughter, Sarah, had left home earlier to head down the hill with her grandmother.

When the last child departed the building, she ran to her car and phoned her husband. People were driving on sidewalks or abandoning their cars. Outside, Skyway Road was already gridlocked. Parents were having trouble making their way to the school. She had to stay with her pupils until they were all picked up. “If you get evacuated, go down to Grandpa’s in Durham.” The small town of Durham was about twenty minutes away, just south of Chico. She drove back home to warn husband Greg and her two children. She finally fell asleep, woke up late, jumped in the car for the quick drive to school, and saw a huge plume of smoke. They kept rattling, a noisy rattling, which meant the wind was really blowing. It was the stained glass butterfly wind chimes, four sets, hanging on the back porch. Shelly Kiefer, a first-grade teacher at Paradise Elementary, kept waking up during the night. Earlier on the morning of Novemshe knew something was terribly wrong. “Wait! Wait! You’re not gonna-!” screamed his crying father into a phone that suddenly went dead. “Dad, I don’t want to die, but I’m gonna die,” he said. The smoke filled his lungs as he uttered what he thought might be his last words. Earlier in the season, he had separated his shoulder simply from hitting the guy carrying the ball. Spencer was a middle linebacker for the Paradise Bobcats. Sports Plaschke: Paradise High football program finds healing among the ashes of the Camp fireĪfter losing everything in the deadly Camp Fire last year, the Paradise High football team leans on camaraderie and community to rebuild their lives. The teen began speaking and couldn’t stop sobbing. Spencer Kiefer, just months after his sixteenth birthday, grabbed his impossibly hot phone, prayed it could hold a signal, and called his father, Greg, who was trapped in his own car while pulling the family trailer several blocks away trying to get his son. He was going to die in a scorching parking lot surrounded by a roaring fire and screaming strangers. He was going to die without his family, without his friends, with only his panting dog Gracie by his side. He was going to be burned alive and alone.

The kid was stranded at the top of a raging mountain. The following is an excerpt from Bill Plaschke’s new book, “ Paradise Found: A High School Football Team’s Rise From the Ashes” and tells the story of one player’s flight to safety. “Rising from the ashes” is a common metaphor in the athlete comeback genre, but it is literally the story of the Paradise Bobcats, most of whom lost almost everything in a 2018 wildfire that reduced 18,000 homes to smoldering ember.

And the guy in the middle burned his drivers licens.