Emily Anastos notices smoke rising from neighbor’s home, alerts parents to danger.

Six-year-old Emily Anastos should have been sleeping at 8:15 p.m. Monday night. Her older brothers were in charge while her parents ran a quick errand. Missing her mom and dad, Emily called them to ask if she could go to sleep in their bedroom instead of her own.

But Emily couldn’t fall asleep.

She went to the window of her family’s Newport Beach home and looked out over the roof and backyard of her neighbor’s house. She likes to watch the “puppies” ? her neighbor’s dogs ? that often play in the yard.

That’s when she saw something that didn’t seem right. From a vent in the neighbor’s roof, Emily spied a streaming cloud of gray smoke.

“It was coming out of the tip of her roof,” Emily said Wednesday, telling her story as she leaned against the window ledge of in her parents’ second-story bedroom.

Emily ran downstairs and told her parents, who had come home, about the smoke. Trish Anastos asked her husband, David Anastos, to go outside and check it out. David knocked on the neighbor’s door and asked if she smelled smoke. The woman reportedly said she had been smelling smoke, but couldn’t find any visible fire.

The smoke Emily saw was a smoldering fire in her neighbor’s attic. Firefighters that arrived on the scene moments later at the home in the 800 block of Ceiba Place found the fire in the attic space above a bathroom.

Fire officials said Emily’s observations may have saved her neighbor’s life ? and certainly her house. The woman escaped the home uninjured because the fire was spotted early, fire officials said. Trish Anastos said the woman has lived next-door to them ever since they moved into the neighborhood 12 years ago. She declined to be interviewed.

“It’s pretty cool,” said 11-year-old Daniel Anastos of his sister’s intuition.

Emily, who will be a first-grader at Pegasus School in Huntington Beach, is small in size, but acts like an adult. She shakes hands and says “thank you for coming,” to her guests. When the firefighters and police arrived, Emily served them snacks.

“I got to offer the watermelon to the policemen,” Emily said.

Emily said she doesn’t know her neighbor very well.

“I just play with the puppies,” she said.

Wednesday, there was no visible fire damage to the outside of the home in the quiet Eastbluff cul-de-sac. A mound of burnt insulation was piled in the driveway of the home, and workers came and went.

Firefighters remained at the scene for several hours late Monday. The fire resulted in $50,000 in damage.

Fire investigators believe the cause of the blaze was electrical.