Baseball vacation cut short by devastating fire

BRUSHTON — By DENISE A. RAYMO

Mary Robideau had front-row seats behind the bullpen for the final game of the Boston Red Sox-New York Yankees series Sunday night.

"We were so excited," she said. "My partner and I had been planning this vacation for six months."

The Major League Baseball game went into extra innings at Fenway Park, with the Sox pulling it out in the end to take over first place in the American League Eastern Division.

But Robideau and her partner, Elijah Tomkiewicz, didn't see any of it.

Instead, they were driving back to Brushton after getting a frantic call about 3 a.m. Sunday that their house was on fire.

EVERYTHING GONE

"We've lost everything. We have nothing," she said Monday. "We have insurance for the replacement value of the house and $30,000 for the contents, but that's not going to be anywhere near what we lost."

Robideau lived at 17 Grove St. with Tomkiewicz and her four children: Melissa Russell, 20; Justin LaVarnway, 17; Katelynd LaVarnway, 15; and Edward Russell III, 10.

No one was at home when the fire erupted and quickly spread throughout the 1½-story older house.

LUCKY TO BE ALIVE

"If we were home when the fire started, we were told we would've perished, so I'm just thankful nobody was home," Robideau said.

"It happened at 3 o'clock in the morning, and we all would've been asleep."

The blaze, which the Franklin County Cause and Origin Team deemed an accidental electrical fire, got its start in the living room.

"It was an extension cord that I had been using for a Glade Plug-In. You're not supposed to use an extension cord, but I didn't know that," Robideau said. "That's right where it started."

PREPARED FOR FIRE

She said they have smoke alarms.

"One goes 'beep, beep, beep,' but it also says, 'Fire! Fire! Get out!' She speaks to you. I know because we've tested it.

"We had fire drills all the time and had an evacuation route that we practiced and practiced.

"I remember hearing about a whole family that was lost in a fire, and I said, 'That's not going to happen to us.'

"But you know the ironic thing? Our evacuation route was the first place that caught on fire. If we would've been home and used our evacuation route, we wouldn't have gotten out."

HELP WITH RECOVERY

Robideau, who works as a floating staff nurse at Alice Hyde Medical Center and its clinics for a number of physicians with specialized practices, said the American Red Cross has been contacted.

And family members are organizing a jamboree to help her family rebuild after such a terrible loss.

HAD STOCKED UP

"We had already done our back-to-school shopping. I'm a coupon shopper, and I always look for ways to save money, so we can have extra things for the kids," Robideau said.

"In my basement, it looked like a grocery-store aisle of hygiene products I'd gotten with coupons. I bet I had a year's supply of hygiene products and laundry detergent, things like that.

"But it's all gone. Our clothing is taken care of, and we've been promised some furniture, but I don't know what it is yet."

She said a local church has offered its missionary house for a few months until they can find a place to rent and try to restore normalcy.

TEARS

"It's so frustrating. And I've been crying a lot of the time since it happened," Robideau said. "It's emotional. It's hard when I'm just sitting here, thinking about what we lost."

She quietly sobbed again, overcome with emotion as she recalled the one-of-kind treasures she has lost forever.

"My dad passed away when I was about 10, and the things I had of his, everything that I had of his, is gone."