A community has shown up for a Pomona teacher who lost her home and dog to a house fire.
Sydni Causey, an elementary school teacher, was alerted by her son on March 14 that their home was on fire.
“My son came in around 1 and was just screaming, you know, ‘There's a fire. There's a fire. There's a fire,'" said Causey.
The mother of three was able to get her children out of their home before everything went up in flames. Unfortunately, their dog was unable to make it out.
Get Southern California news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC LA newsletters.
In the teacher's darkest days, her students and the community stepped in to help.
Fifth grader, Emma Petracci, heard the devastating news and decided she wanted to help her beloved teacher.
"When I first heard about it, I felt sad," said Petracci. "I wanted to like help, try and help her. Even though I couldn’t, I wanted to."
Local
With the help of her family, Petracci started an online fundraising page and raised $30,000 in less than a week.
"Seeing people donating and giving money, to a teacher, people who haven’t even met the teacher, but seeing the community come together has been an amazing thing," said Lou Petracci, Emma's father.
Causey said the money helped with basic needs to live after all their belongings were burned.
"I was out of the house and I didn't even have my shoes on, you know? So I have you know, I was able to go and get shoes," said Causey. "We're staying in a hotel now so that it's able to pay for that."
The kind gesture from a community coming together has carried Causey and her family through this unexpected hard time.
"I have faith and I have people. And those two things have just they have sustained us over the last week. So I could not be more grateful for the people who have supported us," said Causey.
