Whether by instinct, good hearing or just plain luck, Salisbury fire inspector Dev Kannan thought he heard a faint cry for help as he was getting out of his township vehicle recently at the Salisbury Township School District administration building.

"Initially I thought it was children playing at a bus stop," Kannan said.

But as the sounds became more desperate, Kannan's training as a Western Salisbury Fire Department volunteer kicked in and he got back into the vehicle to cruise around the area to investigate if the "Please help me" pleas were real.

About one-and-a-half blocks from the school district building Kannan found a young 12-year-old Salisbury resident who had slipped on the ice and wedged her leg into a damaged storm grate. The youngster had managed to extricate herself from the grate, but she was in severe pain and could not move her leg.

Kannan began basic first aid care and notified the Lehigh County 911 Center to dispatch an ambulance to the location at Paxton Street and Salisbury Road.

The girl's father arrived on the scene and a St. Luke's ambulance transported the young fall victim.

"I spoke to the victim's father later in the day" Kannan said, "and he told me nothing was broken, but he was taking his daughter to an orthopedic specialist to check for internal knee damage."

To Kannan, who is Western Salisbury Fire Department's chief engineer, rendering service to Salisbury residents is just the right thing to do, and is the reason he has been a fire department volunteer since he turned 16 years old, but to a certain 12-year-old girl who needed help, Kannan was a hero.