MIDDLETOWN, Conn. -- When a fire broke out at a group home for the mentally disabled in Middletown, it was the residents' social worker who repeatedly ran into the burning building and pulled them to safety.

Michelle Avery said that on the average day she helps her disabled clients with various daily activities.

"They need our assistance with shopping, with hygiene, with being taken back and forth to different physical appointments, doctor appoints, and basically to better their lives and teach them life skills," Avery said.

Avery works with Gilead Community Services in Middletown and her friends are quick to describe her passion for her clients.

"Michelle is one to selfdelete space-sacrifice, and you know, go the extra mile for people," said Avery's friend, Angeles Ramos.

Two months ago, going the extra mile for Avery meant rushing into a burning apartment building.

In the morning hours of May 22, Avery was doling out doses of medications for her clients when the building's fire alarm went off.

A fire had ignited on the third floor of the group home and Avery said her first thought was to get all of her clients out of the building.

"I went to the first floor and made sure the two clients that were ion the first floor got out," she said.

She said that after removing the first-floor clients from the building, she headed upstairs.

"As I went higher -- there was more and more smoke, heavy thick smoke. … The smoke was awful … and the heat was tremendous," she said.

On the third floor, Avery found two more people, one of whom she said was using a fire extinguisher in a futile attempt to put out the flames.

"He wouldn't leave, so I proceeded to grab the fire extinguisher, throw it down the stairs and asked him to please leave immediately for his safety -- and he did," she said.

Avery said the other client on the third floor was in shock and the bottom of her outfit was on fire.

"I bent down and put it out with my sleeve, and then she wanted to go back into the fire," Avery said. "I screamed and pulled her by her hair and pulled her back and she actually fought with mecomma and I turned her around and I put my hand in front of her face and actually held her tight and brought her down the stairs."

Avery said that once she got the woman outside, she heard someone screaming that another person was stuck inside.

"That was beginning to get very hot and full of smoke and in there, sure enough, was another client," she said.

Avery also dragged that person to safety.

As a rule, fire officials advise people against going inside a burning building.

"When you hear the smoke alarm going off, you need to get out immediately and not … please don't ever go back in," said Middletown's assistant fire marshal, Matthew Scarrozzo.

Scarrozzo did acknowledge that Michelle helped save the building's residents, including the woman who was found on the third-floor, where the fire began.

"If she wasn't there to pull her out of there, she would have been badly hurt, I believe," he said.

Avery's husband, Allen, a retired police officer, told Eyewitness News that no one is more proud of his actions than him.

"I can say in 20 years, I don't think I ever saved three peoples' lives, and she did it in one day, so I'm very proud of her," he said.

Avery, who was treated for smoke inhalation and said she still feels the effects of breathing in so much smoke, said she'd do it all over again.

"Even though my health is not the same, I would do it again," she said. "I could never, never leave someone to die. I just had to do it. I care about my clients."

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