Every once in a while, you pick up the paper and read something so heartbreaking it wells you up. Like this story: Mom Luisa Chan gave her life to save her two young children in a brutal Brooklyn blaze that burned her three-story building to a crisp in a matter of mere minutes.

Momlogic's Vivian: The New York Daily News reports that Chan, along with her husband, Miguel, son Josias, 2, and 2-month-old daughter, Maria, were fast asleep in bed when they woke at 2:30 AM to realize they were trapped by smoke and flames. Her husband straddled the window as Luisa secured their baby daughter into a car seat and handed her over.

" 'There was a person walking below,' Miguel, a Guatemalan immigrant, recounted. 'I yelled in Spanish, 'Help me! Help me save my daughter!' Chan continued. 'And he said, 'Throw the baby!' My wife said don't throw her. I threw the baby.... I had no choice.'

'I saw them throw the baby from the third floor,' his cousin Augustin recalled. 'They couldn't catch her. Bad, bad, bad.' "

As the smoke and heat engulfed their apartment, Chan handed their 2-year-old son to a downstairs neighbor through the second-floor window. Firefighters rescued the little boy by ladder and Chan followed. But as he made his way down, the couple "lost their grip."

" 'Take care of the kids,' his beloved bride, Luisa, said before disappearing forever into the raging fire and black smoke."

The fire took three hours and 140 firefighters to extinguish. Chan was one of 5 people killed, and 13 were injured. The baby is reported to be hospitalized in serious but stable condition with a fractured skull. Investigators suspect arson may have come into play, and city officials are examining whether the building's two residential floors were illegally subdivided.

Childhood sweethearts, Luisa met Miguel when he worked for her family back in Guatemala. He moved to New York 15 years ago, but Luisa and Miguel kept the flame between them alive with phone calls and love letters until she joined him in 2005.

If this fire was sparked purposefully, here's hoping swift justice falls on those who took this special mom from her family.

Vivian Manning-Schaffel has written for Babble, Parenting, The Advocate, The New York Post, Business Week and a variety of other publications and lives and works in the heart of breeder Brooklyn with her husband and two kids. She authors two pop culture blogs: The Mad Mom and A Hag Supreme, and is on the web at vivianmanningschaffel.com.