Mother and 3 Children Find Stability After a Fire, Even Without Furniture Carolyn Cobbs, 33, and her children, Jahci, 11, left, Jaire, 10, center, and Madison, 6, lost all of their possessions and their apartment when a blaze broke out in their building in Yonkers. That August day was shaping up to be one that a busy mother, who held down a job and attended classes, cherishes with her children. Carolyn Cobbs and her sons, Jahci, 11, and Jaire, 10, were getting ready to go to Grant Park, near their home in Yonkers, where the boys would play. Her daughter, Madison, 6, was visiting a friend. The building superintendent just had to finish unclogging their tub, and they would be on their way. As Ms. Cobbs walked from the kitchen to the bathroom, she smelled something pungent in the air, and told the superintendent: It smelled as if something was burning. She went downstairs to alert her neighbor in the apartment below and found smoke billowing outside the unit. Inside, she glimpsed flames covering a wall. Ms. Cobbs ran back upstairs to grab her boys. "I just couldn't believe it; I was in shock," she said. Thirty minutes later, Ms. Cobbs was escorted back inside the apartment by the police, only to find that little remained of the home she had lived in for 12 years. The floor was wet, the wall near the bathroom was broken down, and the kitchen cabinets, the stove and the family's clothes were all piled in the hallway, covered in soot. She could retrieve only her purse and cellphone. All of the family's possessions were ruined. Three of the apartments in the six-story building were lost. The cause of the fire is still under investigation. The American Red Cross paid for the Cobbs family to stay at a hotel for three nights right after the blaze. But Ms. Cobbs, 33, immediately began searching for a new place for her family to live. A local shelter offered room - but for a fee. She had relatives nearby, but said she did not want to burden them. "I want my own space," she said. My kids are very active. Reaching out to them was my last resort. Ultimately, she did turn to her relatives, and for a while, the Cobbs divided their time between two places: Ms. Cobbs's sister's apartment in Yonkers and her father's home in Elmsford, N.Y., also in Westchester County. With the living situation uncertain, and to prevent her children from suffering another loss, Ms. Cobbs made sure they continued to attend the same schools. That has meant waking up an hour earlier at times to drop them off, leaving her just enough time to make it to her job as a teacher's aide for children with special needs at the Andrus children's center in Yonkers. But the fire disrupted Ms. Cobbs's education: she had to suspend taking classes at Westchester Community College, where she was studying early childhood education. And the hardship of living in two places took its toll. During a typical week, her sister Charlotte Cobbs's living room served as a bedroom. The family then packed up on the weekends and stayed with Carolyn Cobbs's father, Jimmy Bristow, about 11 miles away. Though the children enjoyed the backyard at their grandfather's house, they had to be mindful not to make too much noise, which is especially hard when there are 10 people (including their grandfather's four children) under the same roof. "Sometimes they have to share," Ms. Cobbs said, trailing off when describing the family's hardships. In front of her children, she tries to maintain a brave face. Madison, who likes to draw, has asthma that is treated with a nebulizer. Both Jahci (pronounced jah-KAI) and Jaire have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and see a therapist. Jaire has had trouble falling asleep, Ms. Cobbs said, and he has cried about losing their home. He has also been taking sleeping pills since the family was forced out by the fire. Ms. Cobbs earns about $560 every two weeks at her job at the children's center if she is needed every day. She also receives $700 a month in child support and $140 in food stamps, and she had received a housing subsidy for her old apartment. With her finances tight, Ms. Cobbs could not afford to replace her family's lost possessions without assistance. She turned to Westchester Jewish Community Services, a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York, one of the organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. WJCS drew $254 from the fund to buy the family clothing and granted $200 for food and other supplies. Ms. Cobbs's co-workers also raised $600 for the family, which she planned to put down on a new apartment. And this month, that money was put to good use: she secured a three-and-a-half-bedroom apartment in Yonkers that the family moved into last weekend, just in time for Thanksgiving. It is a little farther away from the park the children enjoy. After all that they have been through, Ms. Cobbs keeps some perspective. "My son was so happy," she said of Jaire. I told him, we don't have any furniture, but it's our apartment.