2 Risked Lives, Tried to Save Each Other in Jet Inferno

A Pepperdine University marketing professor fought through flames after the crash of a Singapore Airlines jet in search of the office assistant who helps him run Antelope Valley Christian School in Lancaster.

With his arms burned in the blaze, David L. Ralph, 54, of Palmdale freed a woman from her seat belt, believing it was Christina Reed of Rosamond, his assistant, but it was a grateful stranger, Ralph’s son said at a news conference Monday.

Meanwhile Reed, 26, had freed herself and was helping other people escape from the crash and fire that killed 82 at Taipei’s Chiang Kai-shek International Airport last week. The professor’s son, Sheldon Ralph, and a Sherman Oaks surgeon who gave that account at Monday’s press conference, said the two probably made their injuries worse by helping others.

Reed had been sitting in Row 50 and Ralph in Row 51 when the plane struck construction equipment on the runway. The plane’s body cracked open and Reed ended up on one side of the burning plane and Ralph in another section.

The two, who had gone abroad to recruit for the school’s international student program, were reunited on the tarmac.

Dr. Peter Grossman of the Grossman Burn Center said he and other doctors performed reconstructive surgery on 15% of each burn victim’s body Monday.

Ralph, who received second- and third-degree burns on his arms, hands, back, face and right leg, founded Antelope Valley Christian School 12 years ago with his wife, Patricia. He also is an associate professor of marketing at Pepperdine University.

Sheldon Ralph of Calabasas said the Lancaster school and its 380 students from preschool to 12th grade are his parents’ labor of love.

“My father and mother have dedicated their whole lives to helping people,” the son said. “They founded the school, and they don’t take a salary.”

The elder Ralph had been making four or five visits a year to East Asia since 1997 to recruit students for the school’s International Intellectual Exchange, a boarding program that immerses foreign students in American culture.

Reed joined the school about two years ago, Sheldon said, and she now heads fund-raising efforts.

“She didn’t want to leave the plane without my father,” Sheldon said. “[Firefighters] had to force her to leave the plane.”

Her burns were primarily confined to her arms, hands and face, Grossman said.

Grossman said Reed and Ralph gave similar reports of searching for each other through the chaos on the runway, stopping to help others to safety.

When asked how he felt knowing his father was a hero, Sheldon Ralph responded: “That’s something I’ve known all along. It’s not news to me.”

Reed and Ralph are expected to remain in the hospital for another two weeks, undergoing more skin-grafting surgery, Grossman said.