Chumi Paul rehabilitates bats for a living. She co-founded a nonprofit called Los Angeles Bat Rescue. Her love of the local environment dictated where she chose to buy a house in 2011, in a cul de sac in Altadena that butts up against the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. Her home, in a neighborhood nicknamed “The Villas,” wasn’t big, “but it was beautiful,” Paul said.
It was 1,200 square feet in size, built in 1951 with old-growth redwood and 26 windows.
“One of the things I’ll miss most about our house — apart from how pretty it was — is how big the windows were,” said Paul’s 11-year-old daughter Maile. The two of them could see Canyon bats at dusk in the summer, as well as birds, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, bobcats and mule deer all year round, traveling in and out of the parkland nearby.
Paul was close with the human neighbors, too, especially since the pandemic, which encouraged them to talk to each other and band together as a community. “We all help each other. We all feel — felt,” she said, correcting her verb tense mid-sentence, “so lucky to live where we lived in Altadena, but also, in our neighborhood,” Paul said.
Three days after the Eaton fire destroyed their home, Paul and Maile were holed up in a Pasadena hotel room. They were still in shock then, full of grief and exhausted, glued to their devices, checking in with friends from the neighborhood and from Maile’s school to see who had also lost their homes. “We’re all just completely shattered, and we’re all in a group chat text chatting every day, processing what has happened,” Paul said.
The Eaton Fire has catapulted Paul, Maile, and their neighbors in The Villas into what promises to be a years-long odyssey. They want to rebuild, but first, they have to find another place to live, work, go to school and plan their return to Altadena.
Maile’s in a group chat with 10 close friends, seven of whom have lost their homes. They renamed that chat “70% homeless.” Early hopes of returning to sixth grade at Odyssey Charter Schools’ North Campus in Altadena evaporated because of regional contamination from the Eaton Fire. “I don’t know how they plan on sustaining the school when everybody in Altadena lost their houses. I don’t know how that will work. But we really like our school, so we hope we can go back,” Maile said.
The community the school served — the students and the teachers and staff — has been scattered to the four winds. Odyssey just found another location for middle schoolers in Pasadena, but Maile wants to go to the new school in Thousand Oaks instead. “There’s not exactly a place to go back to. There aren’t any houses in Altadena to buy. And if there were, the prices would probably go really up because everybody wants to grab a house,” Maile said, sighing. “So I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
At least Maile and her mom have each other and their communities of friends on the group chats. A friend has set up a GoFundMe for Paul and Maile, as so many have for their fire-afflicted friends. “There’s so much love coming to the surface. So many people are offering to help. People that I don’t even know, and it’s kind of restored my faith in humanity, in a way,” Paul said.