By Rocco Parascandola
Newsday
QUEENS, N.Y. — Renee Chong’s children always came first.
It was that instinct that sent the city correction captain back into a roaring blaze in her Queens home early yesterday after she realized her two young sons hadn’t made it out.
Chong, 40, died in the fire at her Rosedale home along with Elliot, 10, and Noah, 7, fire officials said.
Firefighters told Chong’s relatives she spent the last moments of her life screaming for help at her front door, then running back up the stairs to get the boys.
“That’s the type of person she is,” said a friend, Kyle Thomas. “If something happened to those kids, she couldn’t go on living.”
There was one piece of good news in the otherwise stunning tragedy — Kendrick Gibson, 38, who lives in the basement and is legally blind, had spent the night visiting his fiancee and was not home at the time of the fire.
He returned later and appeared shaken at the loss of his home and the coincidence that saved his life.
“I’m really lucky,” he said.
The 4:55 a.m. fire was on 149th Road, a quiet residential street. Fire marshals late yesterday ruled it accidental, and law enforcement sources said marshals believe an electrical short in a hot tub on the second floor triggered the blaze.
Chong’s relatives spent a good part of the day at the scene, consoling each other, lamenting their loss and lavishing praise on Chong, a Jamaican immigrant who got her master’s degree at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and worked her way up the ranks of the Correction Department.
She was planning to retire next year but was nonetheless hoping for a promotion to assistant deputy warden before then.
“She always listened to me because I’m an old-time mother,” said her mother, Josephine Chong-Beswick. “I told her, ‘Education first, boyfriends after.’ I’m so proud of her because she’s now studying for another promotion - and now she’s gone.
“But she’ll get that promotion in heaven.”
Chong joined the correction department in 1988 and became a captain in 2000. She was assigned to Queens courts and, her colleagues said, made her mark as a supervisor who tackled problems head-on, often thinking up innovative ways to get things done.
“It [has] already hit our department in so many facilities,” said Ronald Whitefield, head of the Correction Captains Association. “She’s had that kind of impact.”
For all the accolades, however, those who knew her said her children were the most important part of her life. She spent her free time, particularly weekends, doting on them and taking them from one activity to another.
Thomas, himself a retired correction officer and now owner of Josefine’s, a restaurant in Rosedale, said Chong and her sons ate there every Saturday, the kids devouring their chicken fingers and fries.
“Every weekend, she did something for those kids,” he said. “Every weekend. ... She made me feel like I’m slacking. She was such a good mother.”
The flames quickly compromised the home’s structure, and when firefighters arrived — about five minutes after the first 911 call — they found that the third floor had collapsed onto the second floor. One boy had been asleep on the third floor, the other on the second.
“It just started like that. It took off,” said a neighbor, Bonda Rhabb, 41. “It was intense.”
Firefighters quickly found Chong and one of the sons, but it took some time to locate the second boy in the rubble.
Matthew Nestel contributed to this story.
Copyright 2007 Newsday