HALLOWELL — The last time Peter Schumacher and Mohamad  Daaboul saw each other, Daaboul and a Hallowell police officer were scrambling to help Schumacher and his daughter off the roof of his burning home.

Daaboul, with Hallowell Officer Noah Lebel, got Schumacher and his daughter down a ladder and to safety. In the chaos of the nighttime fire, which drew firefighters from around the region and bystanders from the neighborhood and beyond, no one saw where Daaboul — then an unidentified mystery man — had gone.

Schumacher and Daaboul met for the first time on Wednesday, in the yard of that house after the Hallowell Police Department was able to find Daaboul and get in touch with him, to thank him for his heroic effort. Police had been trying for the past week to identify Daaboul, whom they hailed as a “civilian hero.”

Peter Schumacher, left, hugs Mohamad Daaboul on Wednesday at Schumacher’s fire-damaged Franklin Street home in Hallowell. Daaboul was the mystery passerby who moved one of Schumacher’s ladders so that he and his daughter could get down from a one-story roof during last week’s destructive fire. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

After a brief introduction, and an inquiry after Schumacher and his daughter, they hugged.

“You definitely helped out,” Schumacher said. “You made our night a little bit better.”

And for the first time since the night of the fire, Daaboul and Officer Lebel, who was the first public safety official on the scene that night, were able to meet.

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Schumacher, who has served as a volunteer firefighter in Hallowell, and his daughter had taken refuge in her bedroom after they were alerted to the fire shortly before 10 p.m. on May 23, and then stepped out onto the roof of the home’s former entry that has been converted into a pantry.

They’d had a plan about what to do in the event of a fire, he said, and they had practiced it. And that’s how they found themselves on the roof, where Schumacher had been shouting to his neighbors for help.

Daaboul, whose work as a truck driver takes him all over the country, has been visiting family who live nearby, including his sister and her young daughter. He was with his mother when they drove up Central Street and saw the fire.

He said two people were taking pictures and had told him to come back, because they were calling 911. But he said he could hear the shouting.

“The flames broke something at the window,” Daaboul said, “and then I heard (Schumacher) say, ‘I am here!'”

He followed Schumacher’s directions to a ladder that was propped up near Schumacher’s truck. And although the flames reached more than 20 feet into the air above the home, he said he wasn’t scared.

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“There was no time for that,” Lebel said, and they laughed.

After the Schumachers made it to the ground, Daaboul returned to the car where his mother had been praying, and headed home to his sister’s, where he watched the fire for a while worried it might spread.

“Everyone’s talking about you, but they don’t know who you are,” said Christopher Giles, interim chief of the Hallowell Police Department.” An angel came down and saved people and they don’t know who you are.”

Hallowell police officer Noah Lebel, from left, and Peter Schumacher chat with Mohamad Daaboul on Wednesday at Schumacher’s fire-damaged Franklin Street home in Hallowell. Daaboul was the mystery passerby who moved one of Schumacher’s ladders so that he and his daughter could get down from a one-story roof during last week’s destructive fire. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal

Daaboul grew up in Syria and came to the United States in 2016 as a refugee and settled in the Phoenix area with his family. Some of his family have since moved to Hallowell, to a home not far from Schumacher’s.

Schumacher grew up in the home at 1 Franklin St., which dates back to about 1913. It is, he believes, a Sears kit home.

His parents used the home as rental property before Schumacher bought it and undertook a renovation, including installing a sprinkler system.

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Schumacher said he and his daughter are staying with his parents in Chelsea while he waits for the investigations by his insurance company and the Office of State Fire Marshal to be completed.

Giles invited Daaboul to return in the fall for public recognition in front of the Hallowell City Council.

“We’d like to have you back and present you with an award,” Giles said. ” … What you did was extremely heroic.”

Daaboud is returning to Phoenix shortly, but said he’d return to Maine.

“You’ll have a hell of a story for when you go back, that’s for sure,” Schumacher said.

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