SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Three young men were catching a ride home from a Syracuse city school teacher when they happened upon a North Side home on fire. The trio didn’t hesitate to rescue a family of four.

The three young men, refugees from Africa and the Middle East, had just watched a Carrier Dome lecture Sunday night by Trevor Noah, host of “The Daily Show” and an immigrant from South Africa. It was a celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Teacher Joyce Suslovic -- known to them as “Mrs. S” -- had loaded the trio into her minivan to bring them back home after the event.

They were heading west on Park Street near John Street around 9:30 p.m. when they saw a man waving his arms wildly in the street, smoke rising behind him from a home at 834 Park St. He shouted that the home at was on fire. Suslovic pulled over her car to call 911, but the boys jumped out of the van and ran inside the home.

“The doors flew open, and these guys jumped and ran,” Suslovic said.

The boys are Irakoze Boris, 19, of Burundi; Mohamed Al Hariri, 21, of Syria; and Celestin Waso, 18, of Congo. Al Hariri and Boris go to Onondaga Community College. Waso is a junior at Corcoran High School.

Suslovic used to teach Boris, helped Waso with his Regents tests and teaches two of Al Hariri’s younger brothers.

On the way back from Trevor Noah’s lecture, Waso said he was reflecting on the similarities between Noah’s life and his own. He knows what it’s like to grow up fatherless in a country torn apart, having lost his dad at a young age and grown up in a refugee camp in Tanzania.

“I just remember those memories, growing up with a single parent with five kids. That was kind of tough. Just living, not knowing what you’re going to do in five years,” Waso said. “It’s just a blessing, I have so much appreciation being here in America, knowing that I’m going to be a different person in five years.”

Waso also was no stranger to house fires. In the Congo, he said, he rescued his grandmother from a burning home. He was scared then and Sunday night, but there was no other choice but to try and save the family, he said.

“It was like, this is danger. But they are in danger. So we have to do what we have to do to get them out of this place,” he said. “So we didn’t really think about it.”

Waso was the first one to run into the home, followed by Al Hariri and Boris.

Once the young men ran inside, they saw the family -- an elderly woman, two young girls and their mother -- still in the living room, a movie playing on a computer screen, with smoke pouring from the kitchen. They still aren’t sure why the family hadn’t jumped into action. It’s possible they were so scared that they couldn’t move, the boys said.

“We told them, we gotta go,” Boris said.

They escorted the four of them to safety and picked up a jacket on the floor to keep one of the girls warm in the freezing temperatures. They helped the elderly woman across the street just as the fire visibly grew larger. They put the woman’s hood over her head to keep her warm.

That’s when they heard the smoke detector and the firefighters showed up, the boys said. And the mother of the two girls thanked them before firefighters ushered everyone away from the burning home.

“These three young men, they didn’t ask questions. They didn’t need to know who was inside...” Suslovic said, praising them for their actions. “I think the last image I have is (Waso) carrying the grandmother over the ice. It was beautiful."

The fire was out in 20 minutes, according to the Syracuse Fire Department. Five occupants of the home are getting help from the Syracuse Red Cross.

Each of the young men is the oldest siblings in their family and primary translator, Suslovic said. That’s probably why they felt it was up to them to run into the burning home, she said. And they don’t see their actions as especially heroic.

“I think there are good people out there who do bigger things and they don’t get recognized for it,” Waso said.