Six-year-old Virginia Rojo seems unaware of all the fanfare and bewildered by fuss around her. Everybody called her a hero. People were particularly amazed when the little Virginia she told the story that “Papa Jesus” woke her up and told her to save her brother when their home was on fire.

The 6-year-old girl has no time to enjoy all the praise and admiration of her being a hero because the little girl is dealing with the constant pain caused by the severe burns on her face.

Virginia became an instant celebrity in their hometown in Sipalay City, Negros Occidental when, at dusk on Sunday, she used her body as a shield to save her 4-month-old baby brother from a fire that destroyed their tiny home and left her with second degree burns on the upper part of her face and on her tiny hands.

Virginia’s mother, Lorna a laundry woman and a single parent since she and her three children were abandoned by her husband in 2009, left Virginia to take care of her 4-month-old brother while her mother and nine-year-old sister were out at work.

Virginia, who was asleep in their wooden shack in Barangay San Jose, Sipalay City, woke up at around 9 p.m. Sunday with their house on fire. She was asleep beside a makeshift crib where her brother was also fast asleep.

“Jesus told me to wake up and save my baby brother. A curtain of fire fell on my head and I saw the fire eating up our house. I rushed to get my brother. I hugged him so he would not feel the scorching heat,” Lorna recalled her daughter as saying.

On the phone interview with Lorna, she said her young daughter shielded her brother with her body as she dodged burning debris and rushed out of their house.

“It was very hot and I did not notice that I had already caught fire myself,” Virginia told her mother.
Her baby brother whom doctors found to be suffering from second degree malnutrition was unharmed but little Virginia’s hands, face, nose and the area around her eyes were badly burned.

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