‘Totally worth it.’ Mom, daughter answer stranger’s plea to save Stripper the cat in Bay Area fire

As the one of the state’s largest fires rained ash on her hometown and destroyed homes just beyond the city limits, Carrie Paulson decided to drive right into it to save a cat.

Not her cat, but a complete stranger’s.

Paulson, a Vacaville resident, was scrolling through posts on the Nextdoor app for her North Bay area neighborhood Wednesday looking for information on evacuations when she came across a plea for help.

Kerry Boykin was out of state when the fire forced the evacuation of her neighborhood on Serenity Hills Road. And her cat, Stripper, was stuck inside. Boykin had commented on the Nextdoor post, and Paulson saw it.

“Nobody is going to see this post,” she said. “Nobody is going to know about this cat. That’s why I went.”

Paulson and her 18-year-old daughter, McKenna Bernard, tried calling animal control first, and were told they would need a Sheriff’s Office escort to get into the evacuation zone.

When they didn’t get a call back from deputies or animal control, they decided to go in by themselves, they said.

“I volunteered,” Paulson said.

Paulson and Bernard left the safety of their apartment and drove deep into the evacuation zone, surpassing barricades and roads riddled with debris. When they reached Boykin’s street, a one-way asphalt road on the top of a hill, Paulson worked her way up the road stacked with fire engines as personnel worked to set backfires and protect homes. One firefighter, Battalion Chief Patrick D’Arcy of the San Francisco Fire Department, offered to help her.

D’Arcy took a lime green cat carrier and a can of cat food from Paulson and her daughter, and jumped into his pickup truck.

“I’m running on total adrenaline right now,” Paulson said as firefighters continued to work all around her.

When a few minutes passed and D’Arcy hadn’t come back up the hill, Paulson drove into the smoke after him. She returned with a cat named Stripper.

She said D’Arcy found the cat inside and had stopped to save the house first before returning. Bernard said the house “had mini fires all around it” and firefighters were putting them out.

“We called the lady and told her we got her cat, and she was so happy,” Bernard said, holding the small tabby with golden eyes in her arms. The cat meowed softly as Bernard petted the cat’s head through the carrier. “She was like cheering on the other end.”

“It was totally worth it,” Paulson added.

Paulson and her daughter returned to their Vacaville apartment near Gibson Canyon, where they were forced to evacuate later that day. When they lost power and couldn’t find a hotel room, Boykin offered to help.

“Carrie is special and I know not everyone would do that for a stranger!!!,” Boykin said in a text message to The Bee. “We are very lucky and blessed and we can’t wait to be reunited with our cat!!!!”

She found a hotel and reserved a room for them, their two cats named Kitty Purry and Heffalump, and Stripper.

“It was all meant to be,” Paulson said. “I’m just grateful everybody is OK and the cat is OK.”

This story was originally published August 20, 2020 at 3:45 PM with the headline "‘Totally worth it.’ Mom, daughter answer stranger’s plea to save Stripper the cat in Bay Area fire."