Hakim Laws caught a child dropped from a burning building, and it was captured on video. That should have been enough to make him an internet sensation.

Instead it was the two words he uttered in a TV interview afterward that catapulted him to virality: “Unlike Agholor.”

Laws has been homeless for the last year, and early on the morning of Sept. 23 he was “pacing back and forth, talking to the locals,” in West Philadelphia, after having watched the Eagles game at a friend’s house.

“I see a haze of smoke; I see the fire in a window,” he said. Laws, a former firefighter, said he did not think twice about rushing to help. “My natural instinct was: ‘Shoot, let me run down there. They can always use a hand, stretching hose, whatever.’”