Pokémon Go Players Save Home, Family Dog from Fire

Royal Oak, MI — Say what you will about the Pokémon Go craze that’s sweeping the nation — and plenty has been said about ne’er-do-wells reeling gamers in like hungry fish — but a pair of players in Royal Oak saved a family’s home and their 10-year-old dog from fire.

Patrick Audish, 24, of Lake Orion, and his fiance, Katelyn Zack, 21, of Ray Township, stopped for dinner in Royal Oak Wednesday after looking for venues in Birmingham for their wedding next year.

Audish had just downloaded the Pokémon Go app and cajoled his fiance into playing the game.

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“We had been walking around for about 10 or 15 minutes when we saw smoke coming from the house,” Zack told Patch. “We thought someone was grilling, or having a small bonfire in the back yard.”

Audish thought something looked off and suggested a closer look.

“The fire was really close to the house, and we realized it was almost on the side of the back deck and starting to go under it,” Zack said.

They called 911, and the Royal Oak Fire Department responded within a couple of minutes and doused the fire before it could spread.

The homeowner had been smoking on his deck and left a still-lit cigarette in a flower pot with wood chips and other cigarette butts when he left to take his children to an appointment. The family had just left for a ball game, leaving their 10-year-old flat-coated retriever, Stanley, inside the home.

“They saved my house,” Randall Bishop, 40, the homeowner, told the Detroit Free Press of the wandering Pokémon Go players. “This whole Pokémon thing is obviously a positive …”

City officials engaged in plenty of hand wringing before the wildly popular app was launched.

“It’s the nature of city officials to worry about everything,” Judy Davids, the city's community engagement specialist, told Patch. “From a city of Royal Oak, we were trying to figure out, ‘Is this a threat or an opportunity?’ ”

Royal Oak is a popular destination for people playing the game, and the library adjacent to City Hall is a Pokémon gym. “All these kids,” Davids said. “It’s like a zombie apocalypse walking toward our building.”

Davids said she is a Level 6 Pokémon Go trainer and part of Team Valor. “I’m trying to understand it,” she explained, “because I’m trying to understand what is happening to our city.”

Worries about the city’s liability if someone fixated on a phone screen, tripped and fell, for example, proved unfounded.

“Sort of the opposite happened,” Davids said, referencing the engaged couple who called in the fire report. “People are acutely aware of their surroundings.”

City and business owners haven’t tried to capitalize on the influx of people playing Pokémon Go, following the advice of millennials and others playing the game. Their message, Davids said: “Once The Establishment gets involved, they just ruin it.”

City officials and business owners decide to take a hands-off approach and are “just letting this thing happen organically.”

Image: Courtesy of Katelyn Zack