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KEARNS — Unified police officer Brandon Sulich knows as a new officer that following instructions is important.
But so is saving a life.
Just after 8 a.m. Monday, an off-duty Sulich was sitting in his patrol car at the department's Kearns precinct, waiting for his group's prompt 8:15 a.m. departure to go to the funeral of Unified police officer Doug Barney, when he heard dispatchers send out a call of a house fire.
"Once they put out the address, I realized that I was probably only 30 seconds away from it," Sulich said Tuesday.
The young officer, who is still on probationary status, now had to decide whether to wait for the group to go to the funeral or respond to the house fire.
"It was a very quick decision. It almost seemed natural. It wasn't like I struggled with it. It was about the time it took for my hand to get up to my shifter was about how long it took me to make a decision," he said. "Of course, the priority to possibly save lives is more important."
Sulich was the first person to reach the burning house at 4380 W. 5255 South. As he arrived, dispatchers reported that two people were possibly trapped inside.
"I could see that there were flames coming from the top. It looked like portions of the roof were actually already collapsed," he recounted.
The officer said he remembered "back to the fourth grade" and put his hand on the front door to see if it was warm. He then entered and soon found a couple in a basement bedroom.
As Sulich tried to prompt them to move along and get out, he tried to find a way to escape. The exit closest to them, through the kitchen to a back patio, was already burning.
"At one point, I actually caught an ember between my shirt and my neck," he said. "I could feel the heat radiating from the ceiling and I could see that it was singed around the corners."
Realzing that the situation was getting more dangerous by the minute, Sulich attempted to get the couple to move faster.
"I think they realized the house was on fire but I don't think they realized how bad it was until they got outside," he said.
The woman typically used a walker to move around and her husband had just gotten out of the hospital after recently suffering a stroke.
"It had gotten to the point where I decided we needed to start acting. I grabbed the female who was furthest away and started escorting her towards the door. The male was behind her and I started pushing him as well," Sulich said.
As the woman started making her way up the stairs, West Valley Police Sgt. Trudy Cropper and officer Scott Folkers — who were covering the Kearns area on Monday so Unified officers could attend Barney's funeral — entered the burning house. They both thought they were the first to arrive until they saw Sulich come around the corner at the bottom of the stairs carrying the man.
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Cropper's body camera was turned on and recording as she and Folkers went into the house. Both officers can be heard in the video trying to prompt the couple of move faster.
"We gotta go fast ma'am," and "C'mon, you gotta hurry," the officers are heard saying on the video.
"It was tough because they were elderly and they moved very slowly," Cropper recalled.
At the top of the stairs, the woman was put into her walker, which had a platform for sitting, and wheeled out of the house. When the man got to the front entrance of the house, Folkers picked him up.
"He was having a hard time walking, and I just picked him up and carried him down the sidewalk," he said.
"If it was probably five more minutes, the fire probably would have collapsed the entrance right into the basement and they would have been pulling us out of the basement windows because there was no way to get out," Folkers said.
Once the couple was out and in the hands of paramedics, Sulich hurried back to the Kearns precinct. He arrived at 8:13 a.m. just as other officers were getting into their cars. He told them that during the 3 minutes he was gone, he had run into a burning house, rescued two elderly people, and still made it back in time for the funeral.
"I smelled like smoke and just went about my day as normal," he said.
It wasn't until they all got outside the house that Cropper said she got a good look at Sulich and realized what was happening. On Tuesday, she nearly teared up as she talked about how impressed she was with the young officer.
"I didn't realize that he had on his full, class A uniform and that he was on his way to the funeral. He wasn't dispatched to be there, and he stopped to help these people get out of their home," she said. "To be on the way to a funeral of one of your fellow officers, and you have the character to stop at a burning house, get two elderly people out of this house, and then three, four minutes later you're on your way back to the funeral, I think that's pretty amazing."
Kathleen Gasu, the woman who police pulled out of the burning house, said she didn't realize how bad the fire was and was thankful for the officers.
"I appreciate them being so concerned and making us hurry," she said.
But Folkers said a "thank you" wasn't necessary.
"Just gotta do it. We're there to do a job, we're there to serve the public and protect the public, that's what we're paid for. That's why we put a badge on every day, to help and protect the public," he said.
Sulich also downplayed his actions, saying it's the kind of service that all officers do everyday — the kind of service that Barney gave for 18 years.
"If Doug was there, he would have responded as well."
Contributing: Mike Anderson
