SULPHUR, OK - A woman battling a potentially deadly disease risks her own life to save a Sulphur family from their burning home.

32-year-old Emily Clark said she was a little late to work yesterday but said her boss didn't seem to mind when she gave him her excuse.

"I was driving to work and I saw a smoke column coming up," Clark said. "Usually you will see a house fire or something like that and they're already people on scene, you know people running around, firefighters but there was nobody anywhere because it was early in the morning."

The front portion of a family's home was engulfed in flames.

"I went around to the back of the house and started banging on the back door and still didn't hear anything it was locked,' Clark said. "It was smokey and the front of the house you could see all this orange flames coming up."

Homeowner Crystal Berryhill said, "I grabbed my the kids and I took off running to the bedrooms to get out and someone had already kicked in the back door because we didn't know it was on fire."

Emily said her instinct to save the family came from her days as a firefighter.

"I'm not currently because of cancer and treatments and stuff but I was a firefighter and I got all that training through here," Clark said. "Cancer is pretty prevalent these days so a lot of people have it so its not much to it. I am doing treatments for it and I'm doing okay."

The Berryhill family said because of Emily's call to 911 their home was not a total loss.

"Stuff can be replaced," Berryhill said. "I'm just glad my kids got out. That's all that matters to me."

"I would like to thank the firemen that came up and put out the fire cause if it were for them we wouldn't have even known if it were for any of those neighbors," Berryhill said. "You know there is a lot of good people around here still that would help out you know."

The Berryhills were working to repair their home this afternoon and hoped to be able to stay there tonight.

Sulphur Fire Marshal Pete Haines said the cause of the fire is under investigation.