MARLBORO, NJ — Jennifer Kleinow was at work on Aug. 21 when her daughter called her to tell her there was black smoke coming from the family’s car.
Kleinow’s 17-year-old daughter had just dropped her mother off at work and was driving her younger siblings, ages 6 and 4, to her aunt’s home for babysitting when the teen saw smoke as she drove along Route 18 in Marlboro.
Her daughter hung up the phone as she wrestled the car to the side of the road and then got her siblings out, Kleinow said.
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“When she hung up on me I kept calling her back,” Kleinow said. When her daughter finally answered the phone again, “she was hysterically crying. She’s like ‘It’s on fire! It’s on fire!’ And I’m like ‘Are you guys safe?’”
The car had gone up in flames moments after the teen and her siblings were out.
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Kleinow borrowed a co-worker’s car and rushed to the scene.
“I pulled in front of everybody and just grabbed my kids and just cried,” Kleinow said.
Kleinow said she’s both proud and surprised by her daughter’s heroic actions.
“I told her that I’m so surprised she did that because I think even me, at 40, I would have been like ‘okay, the car’s smoking, I’ll just try to get home real quick,’” Kleinow said. “You know? I don’t even think I would have thought like ‘Oh, let me pull over.’”
It was no easy task, as Kleinow said the car locked up as her daughter tried to pull onto the shoulder.
“She had to use all of her might to pull over,” Kleinow said. “When she got into the shoulder, she jumped out of the car and ripped the babies out of the car.”
“I’m just so proud of her,” Kleinow said. “I’m really, really proud of her. If it wasn’t for her, I would have lost three out of five of my kids. And it’s the hardest thing to do and deal with every day that I wasn’t there, you know? So just kiss on your babies a little bit more today.”
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Though everyone involved in the fire was physically all right, Kleinow said she had just gone back-to-school shopping and lost everything she purchased in the fire.
“I kept everything in my trunk because I didn’t want them getting into it [before school],” Kleinow said. “Clothes, sneakers. Everything was in the car … we lost a lot.”
In addition to clothes and school supplies lost in the fire, Kleinow said her eldest daughter also lost her AirPods and a MacBook that her daughter saved up money to buy.
“I know it sounds so stupid, because my kids are alive — but that’s like their life, you know?” Kleinow said. “Technology’s so important to these kids. So now we’re just trying to figure things out.”
Though Kleinow has since been able to purchase a rental car to replace the one lost in the fire, she said the original vehicle was one she only got three months ago. Additionally, Kleinow said she signed “as is” paperwork for the car, so the dealership doesn’t have accountability for its condition.
“I’m financially strapped,” Kleinow said. “I’m a single mom of five and I live paycheck to paycheck, so I was in dire need of a car. I’m going to have to pay that off before I can even try to get a new car.”
In the meantime, Kleinow said she’s hoping her insurance company will give her enough that she can have “at least a couple of dollars” to start saving again. On top of replacing her car, she also has to find a way to replace her kids’ school supplies.
“I feel like the most help would be [replacing] the car and the kids’ stuff,” Kleinow said. “I don’t really care about me, it’s the kids. I just want to try to bring back their regular days — their iPads and their little Nintendo switches.”
“It’s nothing to us, but that’s like everything to them, you know?” Kleinow continued. “They lost everything. They lost their whole life.”
Tanya Broome, a family friend of Kleinow’s, started a GoFundMe to help Kleinow replace what her family lost in the fire. You can access the GoFundMe here.
To read Patch’s previous coverage of the accident, you can read here.
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