Three Decades After Saving Her From Blaze,
Firefighter Sees Woman Graduate TJC With a Nursing Degree
by Elise Mullinix, TJC Marketing/PR Writer
It was fate and fire that brought Jim Mullicane and Raniqua Franklin together 31 years ago, forming a connection that would span their lifetimes.
On May 8, 1993, Mullicane, then a Tyler firefighter, carried 3-year-old Franklin out of a burning house.
On Dec. 13, 2024, he was a surprise guest at her Tyler Junior College graduation, greeting her with a bouquet of roses and a hug as she crossed the stage to receive her nursing degree.
“To walk into Wagstaff Gym and see him there for my graduation, I had to hold it in so I didn’t cry and mess up my makeup,” Franklin said. “It felt so good to see him present for this milestone in my life.”
Both are keenly aware that it was a day that might never have happened. Franklin was so young at the time, she has no recollection of the fire—but Mullicane will never forget it.
“When we got there, the fire was so bad there were flames coming out of the windows,” he said. “I had all of my gear and air pack on and was ready to go in, but the captain said we were going to go defensive, which meant it was so bad we weren’t going in but just fighting it from the outside.”
Family members who had escaped began screaming that 3-year-old Raniqua was still inside, so Mullicane and his fellow crew members grabbed their hoses and ran in.
“Housefires are not as they appear in the movies,” he said. “You can’t see your hand in front of your face. As we were putting the fire out, we were crawling on the ground and feeling for her. Usually, kids get down low or under a bed, so we were sweeping our hands under the beds as we were putting the fire out. We went all the way through the house and didn’t find her.”
They extinguished much of the fire the first time through, so they were able to backtrack and conduct a secondary search. Crawling back down the hallway, they came to a bedroom and Mullicane felt something behind the door. “I looked back there and literally her little face was right in my face,” he said. “She wasn’t breathing, so we ran her outside and started CPR until the ambulance took her to the hospital. She was so small. My daughter was only about 10 months old at the time, and she was not much smaller than Raniqua was.”
Mullicane and the crew finished putting out the fire and ended their shift, but he couldn’t get the little girl off his mind. “I had to know,” he said, so he stopped by the hospital on his way home and found out she was OK.
Two weeks later, Franklin’s mother took Raniqua to the fire station for a visit. “We took some photos, but I never really saw her much after that,” he said. “Maybe every couple of years, we would see them at Walmart or somewhere in town. I would always wonder about her from time to time.”
In 2020, his wife, Meri Mullicane, surprised him by inviting Franklin and her family to his pre-retirement party. “My wife secretly found her, contacted her mom, and arranged a reunion,” he said. “She was grown and had a little girl of her own who was about the age Raniqua was when the fire happened. It was nice to get caught up and see her again.”
It was a meaningful meeting for Franklin as well. “The retirement party was a surprise to him, to see me and where I was in life and for him to meet my own daughter,” she said, “but it was also a surprise to me because I got to meet all of the firemen who were involved in saving my life that day. It was really special and emotional for all of us.” It also prompted Franklin to follow through on her dream of becoming a nurse.
“I took classes at TJC back in 2011 but got discouraged and stopped for a while. The timing wasn’t quite right for me then,” she said. “I had always wanted to do nursing, but after meeting Mr. Jim again in 2020, I got back in and did what I needed to do to apply for the TJC LVN program. Everything just aligned, and that’s how I knew that this was the right time. This is where I’m supposed to be and this is the field I’m supposed to be in.” She’s currently working as an LVN charge nurse at a local skilled nursing facility and has future plans to return to TJC for her RN degree.
Mullicane couldn’t be prouder. “When her mom called to tell us she was graduating, I literally teared up because it was so special remembering when I found her in the fire and now she’s a nurse and saving lives herself,” he said. “It meant a lot to me to see her accomplish this. I was as proud of her graduating that day as if it had been my own daughter.”
Franklin added, “One of my first assignments during nursing school was to write an essay explaining my calling and reason for wanting to be a nurse, and my essay was about how I wanted to save lives like someone had saved mine. God has a way. I’m fulfilling my purpose now.”