STOWE, Vermont - After risking her life to save her employers children, a 30-year-old Filipino was rewarded with $25,000 as a "gift" for her heroic act.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said on Tuesday that in a statement that Hazel Reposo, a native of Negros Island, saved her employers’ four children and their two friends from a house fire in Stowe. Consul General Cecilia Rebong of the Philippine Consulate General in New York said they learned about the incident when Reposo, together with her employers, Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Wood and their children, went to the consulate to acquire a new Philippine passport.

Reposo lost her old passport and other belongings in the fire."The $25,000 was not a reward but was meant for the education of Hazel’s son. She took care of our most precious possession, our children," they said. Reposo, a business management graduate of the University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos, has worked as a nanny since November 2003.

She left the country for her five-year-old son’s sake to work in Bermuda with her parents and two siblings.