WORKING

Ellen McCarty

HE IS

Fired up.

ALARMING DISCOVERY

A Fountain Valley paramedic and fire fighter, Tim Finucan, 42, can’t sit

still when he gets home from work.

“When I first got married and had kids, I always worked a second job,

like mowing lawns,” he said. “When I didn’t need the extra income, I

needed something to fill the time.”

He has spent almost five years of his time building the Life Alert, a

portable fire detector that doubles as a flashlight, in his garage. The

household safety device will be available in Ace Hardware stores across

the country later this year, and Finucan hopes it will help fire fighters

find the 6,000 people who now die every year in fires, before it’s too

late.

SAVED BY SCIENCE

The invention has caused him a certain amount of angst, Finucan said, and

there were plenty of days he was ready to quit.

“There wasn’t anything amusing about it,” he said. “It was four and a

half years of headaches.”

What has kept him going are the memories of those people he has saved

from burning homes, including George Smyrniotis, a 60-year-old

quadriplegic who was trapped in an upstairs bedroom in Fountain Valley

eight years ago.

At the time, Finucan couldn’t see a thing as flames crackled around him,

even though he was in the same room with the victim, because the house

was filled with blinding smoke.

“I felt around the room with my hands,” he said. “He had a lot of special

equipment in the room, so that made it difficult to search.”

The moment he found Smyrniotis in his bed, Finucan’s oxygen tank ran out.

“I thought I was going to die,” he said. He quickly radioed for help and

jumped out the window. Although he wasn’t able to finish the job, fire

crews carried Smyrniotis outside, and credited Finucan with saving his

life.

Later that year, he saved a 42-year-old woman, Myra Tober, who had passed

out on her bedroom floor when her apartment caught on fire.

“When I touched her body, it just felt like a pile of clothes,” he said.

“I almost kept going, but then I realized it was a person.”

Life Alert is specially designed with a mute button, so that when people

are still alert and able to call out for help, only the light is

activated. Once the person passes out, their fingers slips off the

button, Finucan said, and that’s when the piercing alarm is activated, so

that fire fighters can follow the sound. The light also serves to wake up

a deaf person, who would not hear a traditional alarm.

“Children are especially hard to find because when they’re frightened,

they tend to hide,” Finucan said.

Training children to grab the Life Alert in a dangerous situation could

help avoid the tragedy that struck a family in Fountain Valley several

Christmas Eves ago, when a man ran into his burning home to try and save

his son. They were both killed in the flames.

“I don’t like to think about it,” Finucan said, “but it teaches you to be

safety conscious.”

HOME IMPROVEMENT

Finucan’s wife, Irma, said it’s always interesting living with an

inventor.

“His wheels are always turning,” she said. “We’ll be out to dinner and

he’ll say, ‘I’ve got an idea,’ and I’ll say, ‘Oh no, can’t you finish

what you’ve already started before jumping onto the next thing?’ ”

But she doesn’t really mind, she said, now that one of his ideas is

actually taking off. Finucan’s previous invention, a scoop that allows

pet owners to clean up after their dogs without soiling the tool itself,

was a lesser success.

Their 9-year-old son Brian is a chip off the block when it comes to

inventing, and Irma said she loves listening to them talk. “Sometimes I

forget he’s only 9,” she said. “He loves Albert Einstein.”

Recently Brian decided to attach flashlights to goggles so he could read

in bed at night, she said.

“They see things so differently,” Irma said. “It’s like the show, Home

Improvement, except Tim doesn’t blow things up.”