7-year-old survivor of Oakland fire in legal limbo

Six months ago, 7-year-old Allison Benavides illegally crossed the border between Mexico and the United States. She'd left a comfortable life with her grandfather in El Salvador to be with her mother in her apartment in East Oakland, her family said.

But Friday she found herself homeless and in foster care. Her mother is dead, and her father is in federal custody. Friends and authorities are struggling to decide what to do next.

Early Thursday morning, a jury-rigged series of extension cords that siphoned electricity from a neighbor sparked a fire in the second-story apartment, near the corner of 82nd Avenue and Birch Street, and killed Allison's mother, Ruth Muñoz, 27, her 3-year-old sister, Yvonne Benavides, and a man friends and family knew only as "Memo," who died after saving Allison's life.

Her father, Nelson Benavides, 26, is in a federal detention center near San Diego, waiting to be deported after he was caught crossing the border in July.

Marvin Mendoca, Muñoz's cousin who lives in Oakland, said he hopes the girl can return to live with her grandfather in El Salvador. He raised her before she left for America.

"Everybody comes for the same reason: to have a better life," Mendoca said.

Searching for opportunity

Muñoz came to America from El Salvador illegally six years ago, and worked as a housekeeper, said Ruby Ibarra, a close friend. She lost her job as a housekeeper and began to struggle, taking on Memo as a roommate, Ibarra said.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. turned the power to Muñoz's apartment off on Dec. 2. A company spokeswoman said privacy laws prevented her from saying why the power was turned off. If it was a billing issue, Muñoz would have had 65 days and three warnings before having her power shut off, she said.

Desperate for electricity, Muñoz dangled a heavy-duty orange extension cord over her second-story balcony and plugged it into her downstairs neighbor's outlet, fire investigators said.

The system, fire investigators said, became overloaded with high- and low-capacity cords that powered a television, stereo and strings of Christmas lights, and caught fire, sending flames shooting out of the four-unit building's second-story windows.

No smoke alarms

The apartment had no smoke alarms, investigators said, so by the time Muñoz and her family realized their apartment was on fire, it was full of smoke and flames.