Nearly two decades after a Connecticut detective saved the life of a five-year-old girl in a fatal apartment fire, he found himself looking on this week as a special guest as she graduated from state university,.

Josi Aponti, now 23, used the internet and then Facebook to trace her guardian angel, Retired Detective Peter Getz, two years ago. She then decided that as the person most responsible for her still being alive, he should be there at her commencement ceremony this week.

The June 1998 fire she barely survived broke out in an apartment belonging to an uncle, Jofrey. Josibelk Aponti, her proper name, lost a cousin in the blaze. She suffered third degree-burns.

Rather than waiting for an ambulance, Mr Getz bundled the unconscious girl into a car and performed CPR on her as his partner, Sgt. Donnie Camp, drove at high speed to the nearest hospital.

“I'm told that if he would have just waited a few more seconds for the ambulance to come in, I could have died,” Ms Aponte told NBC News after the Eastern Connecticut State University commencement, held on Tuesday night at the giant XL Center, a sports arena, in Hartford.

“There are only a few moments that are so important in life,“ Ms Aponte said. ”I wanted to share my graduation with everyone who's important to me, who have been there for me, and who helped me through tough times.“

Mr Getz who measures six foot five inches, and Sgt. Camp, spotted themselves featured in a Throwback Thursday post - when people dig up old photographs and post them on social media - last year, reminding both of them of the chaotic day.

“I am honored and humbled to be depicted here on TBT,” Mr Getz wrote in a comment on that post last year. “I take my hat off to the brave and heroic members of the Hartford Fire Department, that entered the active fire, located Josie and brought her out. Thank You.”

But he remains modest even today of the day that made him a hero to one grateful family.

“I did what I was trained to do, what I had to do,” he told the Hartford Courant. A beat policeman then, he happened on Hartford’s Washington Street, when he saw firemen tackling the fire. He was rushing into the building to stamp out the flames when a fireman handed him a limp Ms Aponti and told him to get her to safety.