Four teenage boys are being hailed as heroes after they ran into a burning house to save a 90 year-old woman who was trapped inside.

Last month, Catherine Ritchie was in the bathroom of her home in Sapulpa, Oklahoma when she turned around and was stunned to see that her bed was on fire. Catherine tried to put the flames out to no avail, so she finally called 911 and pressed her emergency call button. It was only when she finally tried to get out of the house that she realized she could not get through the smoke.

At that exact moment, four boys between the ages of 14 and 17 were leaving a neighbor’s house to go to a convenience store when they smelled smoke coming from Catherine’s home. Without hesitating, the teenagers took action.

While one of the boys went to a neighbor’s house to get help, the other three dashed into the home. It was 14 year-old Seth Byrd who managed to eventually get into the backdoor, and when he found Catherine disoriented in the smoke-filled hallway, he picked her up and carried her outside.

“This young boy was right there,” Catherine said. “He picked me up, and I said, ‘I can walk,’ and he said, ‘We’re getting out of here.'”

Missy Ritchie Nicholas, one of Catherine’s ten children, later praised the boys for their heroism in a viral blog post.

“Kids who are told about all the things they aren’t old enough to do saved the life of the most precious and beloved woman we know,” she wrote. “Young men who risked their own lives, their own safety, perhaps their good standing with their parents who might have chosen for them to do otherwise, and they carried my mother out of her burning home into the street, where firetrucks and ambulances would soon arrive.

“Thank you for your selfless acts of heroism and courage,” Missy continued. “Thank you for not allowing this to be the tragic end to our mother’s amazing life. Thank you for staying with her, hugging her, and helping her feel less alone until we could get to her. Thank you for being the kind of young men who thought about another person above yourselves.”

The one word that Catherine can’t stop saying these days is “grateful.”

“That’s what I have to think,” she said. “They were just special, as young as they were.”

God bless these four brave young men! We could certainly use more people in the world like them. Find out more about what they did in the video below.