Officer Armanda Beale initially thought her patrol car was on fire when she smelled smoke on the morning of Feb. 22.

Parked in front of a group of apartments south of West Washington Street downtown, she looked up at her hood to see if there was any smoke rising from it.

She saw smoke rising, but it wasn’t coming from her hood — it was coming from a house nearby on Lee Street.

She first suspected someone was burning trash, even though homes in the neighborhood are close together. But when she drove toward the source of the smoke, she saw flames coming from underneath a home on Lee Street.

Springing into action, Beale reported the fire on the radio as she ran up to the two-story duplex. A neighbor appeared and said there was a family inside.

Meanwhile, Officer Brian Hearn was at his office at the nearby police department headquarters. He was surprised to hear the call on the radio.

“It was early morning,” he said. “Usually, nothing happens that early.”

When he heard the fire was on Lee Street, only a couple blocks away, he left and headed toward the scene. As he pulled up in front of the house, the flames were already making their way up the side of the house.

Beale had focused on the lower apartment first, where she found an elderly man trying to rouse his wife from bed. Ensured he could complete the task, she moved on to the upper apartment, where a woman said her child and two grandchildren were asleep.

“There was no alarm going off in the house,” Beale said.

Both officers helped the woman carry the children downstairs. Hearn then returned to the elderly couple’s apartment, where the woman was trying to gather possessions on her way out of the smoke-filled home.

Hearn encouraged the couple to leave quickly and got them out of the house as the fire department was arriving on scene.

The two officers piled the survivors into their patrol cars to protect them from the bitter cold morning, having spared six lives not only from the cold but also from serious injury or death.

Beale and Hearn shrugged off suggestions that their acts were heroic.

“I guess you would consider it being proactive,” Beale said.

“You can’t stand by and watch,” Hearn added. “It’s one of those things. When you’re in that situation, you feel compelled to act.”