As the daughter of Mexican immigrants, I grew up in a home where nothing was wasted—not food, not time, not opportunity. My parents worked hard and measured life in sacrifices: hours worked living paycheck to paycheck to provide for our family. I am forever grateful to them for making sure my dreams could move forward.
My parents never owned a home and when my father passed away prematurely without fulfilling his goal of moving us out of the housing projects, I made a promise to myself to fulfill that goal. My father died the year I graduated from Stanford, so I knew it would take years before I could do that. My first full-time professional job opportunity was on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and before I earned my first paycheck, I owed my boss $400 for the loan he generously gave me for the downpayment on my first apartment out there. I was 23 years old, and it took a few years of discipline, patience, and living frugally to save enough money to return to Los Angeles and buy that first house.
A few years later, after earning my MBA at UCLA on a Goldman Sachs scholarship, I invested in a second home with my then fiancé. We settled in Alhambra where we would start our life together.
In 2019, we moved from Alhambra to Altadena, and it felt like a quiet victory. We had managed to buy a more spacious house with a larger back yard where our kids, then transitioning to high school, could host friends. A house in a much greener and more peaceful neighborhood with my very own hiking trail just blocks away in the beautiful San Gabriel Valley foothills. Those foothills overlooking the LA basin became a sanctuary for me, a place where I would reflect and pray. Yes, pray with gratitude for my blessings, including this tranquil neighborhood we had settled in. I felt it and would often say it out loud with arms outstretched and looking up to the Heavens, I made it. I thought about my parents and the sacrifices they made to make it possible.
At this stage in my life, I was secure and financially stable. Then the Eaton Fire came, and I realized how fragile “making it” really is.
On January 7, 2025 I got ready to go to the office because we’d been warned by SoCal Edison about an imminent power outage in our neighborhood of Altadena. Citlali, our daughter, had driven off to Stanford two days prior, on Sunday, to start Winter quarter. Diego, our son, had spent the night at a friend’s place in Downtown LA, since he’d be starting his high school community service project close by, in Boyle Heights, the next morning. Luis, my husband, went to the office as usual. Neither one of us had slept much the night before due to the ferocious winds.
That Tuesday, I was back home by 2pm to take a zoom meeting — since I’d heard our power had not gone out as expected. As I sat through my meeting, the winds were howling so loudly that my colleague on the other end of the screen couldn’t help but notice. We ended our meeting early.
Diego was scheduled for his high school soccer practice as usual that afternoon, and I wondered whether the winds were that bad in the Pico-Union area where he was. I checked the parents’ group text for updates, but there were none. I reached out to another ‘soccer mom’ who also lived in Altadena. In talking, we calmed each other’s worries over the situation; then, she asked me, “Do you follow Edgar McGregor?” I replied, “Who is that?” She went on to tell me about him. Edgar was a local meteorologist who had just shared an update about the weather situation on his Facebook page, “Altadena Weather & Climate.” It was not good. He warned of unprecedented, hurricane-like conditions, and he advised Altadena residents to have an evacuation plan ready. After reading Edgar’s detailed forecast, I decided we would leave ASAP. When I told Luis, my husband, that we should leave and pack a bag for a couple of days, he thought I was exaggerating. Nonetheless, he agreed since at minimum, we’d be out of power soon as the weather conditions worsened by the minute.
It was roughly 4:30pm when I phoned Diego, our son, knowing that soccer practice was over by then. I told him, “Don’t come home,” to meet us in Old Town Pasadena, where Luis had just booked a hotel. I packed Diego’s bag with the basics, especially soccer gear — soccer was his “life” at that time. It wasn’t even 5pm when Luis and I got in his car with three small bags and drove off. I saw the color of the sky changing to an ominous color. As we kept driving down Lake Avenue, I had a sinking feeling about leaving my van behind. I sensed that this could be more than a couple of days.
That afternoon I moved with a kind of urgency and uncertainty that made me think about my parents – made me appreciate them even more. They had shared stories with me about leaving things behind—their country, their home, parents, family, versions of themselves. As threatening as things looked that day in Altadena, I knew that my parents’ situation had been different and much worse. The plight of immigrants crossing borders still, today, in search of a better life was much worse. That reflection gave me the faith and hope that this threat would soon pass.
Less than an hour later, we met Diego at the hotel just three miles south in Pasadena. We decided to have a nice dinner together after a chaotic day. As we enjoyed our food, our phones started “blowing up” with texts and calls. As Diego looked down at his phone, he announced, “there’s a fire in Eaton Canyon.” As we wrapped up dinner, I hoped and prayed that the fire – a couple of miles from our house — would not threaten our immediate neighborhood. When we exited the restaurant the winds were so ferocious that I felt they’d sweep me off my feet! I held on tightly to Diego’s arm as we scurried quickly to the underground parking garage.
When we got back to the hotel it was evident that the fire was spreading and people were fleeing Altadena. The smell of smoke was strong and the line of people in the hotel lobby waiting to get a room was long and growing. It was dark outside by then. When we got to our room and looked out the window, we could see the live flames up in the hills. It appeared concentrated in the immediate Eaton Canyon area, far away from our house. Yet, I could smell smoke as the scent grew stronger in our room. We did our best to keep out the smoke, putting towels at the base of the door. I sat at the edge of the bed and prayed silently. I had no idea nor visual of the devastation that was unfolding in our beautiful Altadena foothills that night.
The next morning when Diego woke up, he looked at his phone and exclaimed, “oh my God!” Two of his classmates’ homes, just down the street from ours, had burned to the ground. They messaged Diego that they were walking toward our house to check on it —- I did NOT want to know. I thought our house was for sure gone too. But then Diego announced, “Look! Our house is still standing,” as he put the phone in my face. Our house was still visible behind the dark grey cloud of smoke, with live flames also visible at some distance behind it. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Diego insisted that we drive up to see the house for ourselves. I got in the car with Diego, and as he made the first right turn into Altadena, West of Lake Avenue, the first devastating thing we saw was a parked car burned to the ground. As he turned left to head further North, we found ourselves surrounded by darkness and could see live flames about a block away to our right and to our left. Diego turned on the headlights because it was hard to see in front of us at this point, and we soon came upon a large fallen tree blocking the road. We stopped, looked around and the only light we could see were more live flames. In that moment, I felt that our lives were in danger and we needed to turn around and leave! As we drove away, Diego exclaimed, “It’s like an apocalypse!” We were shocked.
Nevertheless, we tried again a couple of hours later after checking into a hotel in West Covina. I drove with Diego beside me. The closer we got to Altadena, the darker it became. When we got to the southern base of Altadena coming from the East, we navigated through what looked like war-torn streets, zig zagging around fallen trees and other heavy debris, passing burned down empty lots with only the chimneys standing, and faces of devastated homeowners that looked just as empty.
When we got to our house, I was relieved that the house was still there – yet worried that it could be gone in hours. Things were still burning and the firefighters we had just passed looked even more shocked than we did. Why weren’t they trying to take down the live flames still blazing? Once inside, the smell of smoke was unbearable and ash was plentiful everywhere, especially in the doorways. We dashed to the back of the house and as we looked out the windows, we were astonished at how close the flames were —- they had already taken our neighbors’ homes adjacent to our back yard. I gathered myself and grabbed documents the way the evacuation lists had advised—passports, papers, proof that we exist. Beyond that I blanked out and it was Diego who said, “Mom, what about your pictures?” as he grabbed the frames of a lifelong of memories collected that I had displayed on the hallway walls. I ran to the living room to secure as many of the many photo albums I had created with love over the years. I desperately took as many keepsakes and treasured small objects, especially things the kids had made, that carried so much meaning.
As we ran out the door and loaded the last batch of things into the car, I left the doors open – not just unlocked, but open. I felt that it was a matter of time before our house burned to the ground too.
My children have never known the version of life I had grown up in – the one full of uncertainty where every dollar mattered and we couldn’t afford to have nice meals at nice restaurants on the weekends.
They had grown up with money not being much of an object: private schools, summer vacations in nice places, their own bedrooms…
When I finally spoke with Citlali, my daughter, who was up North in college, she asked, “Are we going to lose our house?” It wasn’t just fear in her voice — it was confusion. Citlali pleaded that I save two boxes of mementos in her bedroom. That’s what she cared about. Similarly, Diego left most of his material things behind, and instead helped me gather my mementos.
Nevertheless, they lost something that day. Stability had always been my children’s baseline, not their goal like it had been for me.
I told Citlali that we were going to be okay. But inside, something cracked. Because I knew what it meant to lose something foundational. And I had spent my entire adult life trying to build something that felt immune to it, especially for my children.
The fire didn’t just threaten our home. For the first time in my life, I felt that everything I had worked for — that my parents had sacrificed for — could disappear in a matter of hours. It was shocking that all the hard work, discipline, and steps to move forward—education, career, savings, homeownership—could be undone by something as uncontrollable as wind and fire.
Since then, I have lived with a persistent anxiety that settled into my body and hasn’t left. And it was exacerbated by the aftermath of the fire, everything I had to deal with and manage with insurance and contractors who couldn’t care less about my family’s well-being. I still wake up with dread knowing that there is so much I cannot control, and that everything I’ve worked hard for my entire life can implode.
Being first-generation to “make it” and live the “American Dream” also means I’ve always been aware of how quickly things can change. Even at my most stable, there’s a part of me that remembers instability—not as a distant concept, but as something inherited — something embedded in the way I think about money, security, and the future.
The Eaton Fire didn’t create that feeling. It amplified it, reminding me in the most brutal of ways that what we build is not permanent. Security isn’t a finish line to cross—it’s something that can be shaken and even destroyed. And that realization did something to my mental health that I’m still trying to name and deal with.
And yet, Gratitude is the overwhelming feeling I’ve consistently felt from the beginning of this ongoing ordeal. We are among the lucky ones whose home didn’t burn down, who didn’t lose the memories collected within its walls. Thousands of others weren’t so lucky, with many having no insurance, savings, resources, or even family to provide any level of stability. My family is blessed to be here and to have each other. I’ve learned to redefine security and stability as something we carry forward—together.
