Shawn Simons and Alvaro Llanos are extraordinary men. Together they faced tremendous obstacles in life and managed to overcome them and become the strong, courageous, survivors that they are today.
It was January 19, 2000, when a fire (started by arsonists) tore through the freshman dormitory at Seton Hall University. Shawn and Alvaro were in their room sound asleep when Shawn woke up from the fire alarm going off. In the four months of college, the fire alarm went off every week. He was reluctant to get up assuming that it was another false alarm but remembered the 100 dollar fine that came if you were got skipping a fire alarm drill which motivated him to get up and wake up his friend Alvaro. The book clearly describes what happened next. How after opening the room door they got hit in the face with a gust of hot air and smoke, alerting them that this was no false alarm but the real thing. They quickly got on their hands and feet and started crawling out but got disoriented and crawled straight into the blaze. Shawn managed to crawl though the fire and made it outside but not before obtaining third-degree burns on his hands, and second degree burns on his head. 16 % of his body was burned and he was having complications from prolonged smoke inhalation when he was brought to the hospital. Alvaro, who lost sight of Shawn in the smoke, crawled out and opened a
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The doctors and nurses had seen patients that were determined to get better but none like Shawn. He would need extensive physical therapy but the doctors predicted he would be able to go home in three months. Shawn did not like the sound of that. He was determined to get out in a couple weeks. Though he didn’t verbalize it, his motivation for a rapid recovery was Alvaro. The burn unit staff and his family tried to protect him and told him that Alvaro was fine but Shawn knew that was not the