Parker Ewing was asleep in bed when he felt heat on his face. He opened his eyes and saw black smoke.

“I tried to get under it but I was inhaling more and more black smoke,” the 15-year-old recalled of when his family’s Federal Way home burned in a fire on Friday morning.

Parker managed to crawl out the front door, across the porch and down the front steps. That’s when he heard his grand-grandpa screaming for help.

“My instinct told me to go run back in there and try to save him,” he recalled, noting he went back into the burning home, found his grandpa and put him over his shoulder. The family’s American bulldog named T-Bone pulled at the boy’s pant leg and tried to pull Parker down the hallway as the boy lugged his grandpa toward the front door. “We got him almost to the door and I collapsed because I was inhaling too much smoke,” Parker said. “I woke up in the hospital with tubes down my throat.”

South King Fire and Rescue firefighters rescued the two from the house, located in the 2600 block of SW 332nd St., at approximately 8:30 a.m. Capt. Jeff Bellinghausen said witnesses screamed that there were people inside. The smoke had completely filled the house to where it was only a foot from the floor, Bellinghausen noted.

Using the department’s new thermal imaging cameras, firefighters found the grandfather in the front room, unconscious, and the teenager in the hallway on the floor. Both had heartbeats but were unconscious from smoke inhalation. They were transported to Harborview Medical Center, where the grandfather, Thomas Finckel, later died of his injuries. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

While firefighters were able to save the family-of-seven’s two hamsters, two snakes, one dog and four cats, two pets didn’t make it — including T-Bone and the family’s three-legged cat Bob.

“Our thoughts go strictly to the family,” Bellinghausen said, noting they helped give the boy’s mother a ride to the hospital after she arrived on scene.

Parker’s mom Tiffany Ewing said four generations of her family lived in the house, including her mother, sister, husband, daughter, her grandfather Finckel and Parker.

Her son stayed home from school that morning after the school district alerted families there were rumors that a potential school shooting would occur at Todd Beamer High School.

Ewing and her mother “snuck out” of the house to buy Halloween candy, while Parker and Finckel were asleep.

“All of a sudden we just get to Target and my husband is calling me on the phone,” Ewing recalled. “He said, ‘Get home now — the house is on fire’ … That’s when I lost it and said, ‘Oh my God, Parker is home from school today.'”

When Ewing and her mother returned home, fire officials held them back from the scene as they tried to resuscitate her son and grandfather.

After Parker woke up at the hospital, he told his mother how he tried to save his great-grandpa.

“I’m just in complete awe that a 15-year-old would risk his own life to go back in,” she said, noting her son is small in stature, weighs only 99 pounds and still managed to carry Finckel through the burning home. “It totally baffles me … I don’t know if I would have that type of bravery to go back in there.”

She had to deliver the bad news to Parker that Finckel died.

“He started crying and saying he tried so hard [to save him] and don’t be mad at him,” Ewing said. “I was like, what you did was so unbelievably heroic.”

Parker was treated for carbon monoxide poisoning and was released from the hospital on Monday afternoon.

“He is doing amazing,” Ewing said, noting that her son recovered so quickly that “he was literally running laps in ICU” on Sunday.

She attributes his speedy recovery — and his ability to lift his great-grandpa during the fire — to his athleticism, as he plays select baseball at Diamond Sports. Ewing said her son’s baseball team has been very supportive.

Her mother’s company that she works for, Bellevue-based North Coast Lighting, also stepped up and paid for the entire family to stay at the Comfort Inn in Federal Way for two weeks. “It’s horrible; we lost everything,” she said. “The house is completely gone.”

The family has set up a GoFundMe.com account to help offset their expenses at www.gofundme.com/FamilyFire7. Their plan is to try and raise enough money to find a local rental home where they can all stay together.

“Losing everything, the money we have right now is so little we don’t have enough for the first and last [month’s rent] and deposit,” Ewing said, noting her family members are pooling their resources together.

Despite the extreme hardships, she said it “feels wonderful” to have her son home from the hospital and “it helps my grief a lot knowing that at least one of the two survived.”

She said Parker has “the kindest heart” and often carries groceries for “perfect strangers” at the grocery store.

Parker said he feels “terrific” being home.

“I’m just glad to be alive,” he said. “I guess any day’s a good day when you’re living.”

Raechel Dawson contributed to this report.