Every weekday morning, Deborah Green would drop off her 22-month-old son, Darjon Taylor, at Porter's Playhouse, a day-care center on Chicago's South Side. Every afternoon, she would pick up Darjon and his older brother Dartell Taylor, 5, who would go to day care after school.

But on Wednesday morning, just a few hours after Green dropped off her son, a fire broke out at the day-care facility, a 1½-story house in the 8400 block of South Saginaw Avenue. Day-care owner and operator Thomasine Porter, 58, was able to save five of the six children in her care, but she could not reach Darjon before firefighters arrived. He suffered from smoke inhalation and later died.

Now two families are in mourning over an infant whose death has left a mother and a seasoned caretaker wondering what went wrong.

"I really want to know what happened with my baby. Did you leave my baby upstairs? Was there no one around him?" Green said. "Right now, I'm just trying to figure out what tomorrow's going to bring when I wake up and my baby's not there."

Firefighters said the blaze started in the basement of the Porters' house shortly after 10 a.m., and quickly spread to the upper floors. The day-care facility is run out of the basement and first floor.

Porter told firefighters she was alerted to the fire by a sound of a smoke detector, and she tried to put the blaze out with a fire extinguisher. But the fire, which would eventually engulf the house, had already started to spread, said Larry Langford, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department, so Porter turned her attention to evacuating the children.

Georgia Randle, 57, who lives a few blocks away from the fire, was driving through the neighborhood when she noticed smoke pouring out the windows on the right side of the home, and saw Porter rushing children through the front door.

"She was coming out the house, and she was putting kids into that van," said Randle, who said Porter was frantically counting heads when she offered to help.

The missing child was 22-month-old Darjon Taylor, of the 8700 block of South Manistee Avenue.

Leaving the five children and her husband, Willie Porter, 72, outside, Randle said Porter then began to crawl back into the house, crouching under heavy smoke and lapping flames. Randle followed.

"She went further into the house than I did. But the fire was just too big," Randle said. "I had to grab her and bring her out because she would have burned herself up looking for that last kid.

"I told her: 'That's all you can do darling. You saved the rest of them. That's all you can do.' "

Firefighters had to battle flames before they could enter to search for the child. One firefighter was taken to St. Francis Hospital for smoke inhalation.

Darjon was taken to Advocate Trinity Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Langford said.

Thomasine Porter has been licensed to run the Porter's Playhouse day-care facility out of her home since Dec. 17, 1996, according to Kendall Marlowe, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.

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