The family hadn’t seen the photo yet.

In a hotel room in Rochelle Park, Dion Brown, his wife Jennifer Pearson and two of their three children sat on one of the beds and stared at a photo on the front cover of Hackensack Chronicle. They were transfixed by something that no family wants to get on the front page for. On April 26, flames consumed their home at 220 Anderson St. in Hackensack, a burning orange blossom in the spring night sky.

"I don’t know we survived that," said Israel Brown, 10, a fourth grade student at Fairmount School.

Those standing on Anderson Street that Saturday night may have asked the same question as they watched a fire consume the Brown family’s home. But while the conflagration may have reduced their material things to ashes, the family’s spirits, bolstered by their community, were shaken yet still strong.

The man in the van, then a leap for life

While the cause of the fire has yet to be officially determined, the family suspects that a faulty string of electric lights hung on the front side of the two-family house may be to blame. City fire officials deemed the fire accidental.

The Brown family, who lived on the second floor for the past eight years, was not awakened by the alarms that successfully went off after the fire started.

The source of their sudden salvation was unexpected.

"Some guy was driving past the house in a white van, saw the fire, stopped, then started screaming ‘Get out of the house!’" said Pearson, 30. "If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know where we would be. They should find that guy. He was an angel."

The Good Samaritan involved, described by Brown as African-American, has yet to be identified.

Where the family went after they woke up was directly out of one of the back bedroom windows where C.J., Israel and daughter De’Anna, 9, a third grader at Fairmount School, sleep. Ironically, a city inspector had warned the family six months ago that the lack of fire escapes on the close to 100-year-old house could be a problem if a fire occurred. As a result, Brown and his family had a plan in place on how to get out of their home just in case. When the time came, Brown lowered himself out of the side window, then dropped to the dirt below. He waited on the bottom, arms outstretched, with the mysterious man in the white van. The two men together broke the children’s fall.

"I jumped out the window myself," said C.J., 4.

"It amazes me how cool the kids were," said Brown, 37. "They all jumped right away, no problem."

Unfortunately, Pearson landed awkwardly, suffering a torn anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee.

Other than Pearson, no one was injured or burned in the fire, including first floor resident Francine Alheid. The house was declared a total loss by the fire department, with orders to be demolished.

Going forward

After briefly staying in Brown’s mother’s one-bedroom apartment in Glen Rock, the Browns have been staying at a hotel with funds provided by Bergen County’s homeless hotline. Brown, a YMCA basketball coach in Ridgewood, and Pearson, a nurse at a local rehabilitation and long-term care facility in Paramus, are pooling their resources to find a new place to live.

Pearson remarked about how the Hackensack community has responded to their plight.

"People have been wonderful to us," she said, noting the Fairmount School parent teacher association has been particularly helpful with collecting donations for the family. "It’s great to know how much people care around you."

While Pearson has been avidly looking for a new apartment, she is not in a complete hurry.

"We need a new place to live, but not just any old place," she said, noting that she would like to stay in Hackensack with her family if possible. "If we just moved somewhere that we didn’t really feel comfortable in, it would remind us too much of why we had to move in the first place."

The old place still lingers in the family’s mind.

"That’s all we had in there," Brown said. "We had tons of pictures when the kids were babies. It’s a lot of memories. That’s what bothers me."

However, looking at the picture of the fire that claimed their house laid out on the hotel bedspread, Brown ultimately felt blessed to have the chance to make more memories.

"I’m just glad we all got out alright," he said. "Family is really all you have. I want my family to be together. That’s it."