Swanson: Rallying around the victims of Eaton and Palisades fires

There are so many GoFundMe campaigns.

You can scroll and scroll and scroll through the crowdfunding site’s list of verified campaigns that have been set up, often by friends and family, to support our fellow Angelenos who’ve had their lives turned upside down by the L.A. County wildfires.

The volume is agonizing, but the steadily ascending dollar amounts are heartening. More than $100 million has been raised for families, communities, businesses and relief organizations as of Sunday afternoon, according to a GoFundMe spokesperson – which is a drop in a bucket that’s about the size of the ocean, isn’t it?

Each campaign is a glimpse into the predicament of someone who’s just lost so much, this incredible cross-section of catastrophe. There are Dodger fans and softball coaches, pilates instructors and podcasters, people we know, people we don’t.

There are, of course, athletes. Former college hooper Vance Jackson, who played high school ball at St. John Bosco and La Salle. Chris Stamos, who pitched for St. Francis and Tennessee. Camden Jones, a tight end who played for Maranatha and now for Cal. Hailey Bagby, a University of Portland women’s soccer player who starred at Pasadena High School …

And people who are part of the broader business of sports, who help bring the games to you and make following along fun.

Like Rohan Ali, a videographer for the Lakers since 2016. On Saturday, he was very much still processing the complete loss of his parents’ home in west Altadena, among the more than 7,000 structures damaged or destroyed as of Sunday afternoon by the Eaton Fire.

Gayle Nicholls-Ali and Rasheed Ali weren’t home Tuesday night when the Eaton Fire broke out because they were in the Bahamas, there to celebrate their wedding anniversary and visit friends, said Rohan, who lives in Echo Park.

He’s a gentle dude, Rohan. Softspoken and smiling whenever I see him. His dad is a musician, his mom a photographer and a recently retired teacher – a star educator. I covered Gayle in a past reporting life, when she had served on state and national advisory panels, when she was spearheading the computer programming curriculum at La Cañada High School and also inspiring the young artists on campus.

She and Rasheed saved for a long time before they were able to buy their first house in 2008, when the housing market crashed – the house that’s now “flattened,” Rohan said. “Burnt to a crisp.”

On Thursday, Rohan parked near the Rose Bowl and made the hour-long walk to where the house had been. He eventually wound up at his brother’s place nearby, spending several hours siphoning water out of a neighbor’s pool to save that home and several others on the street from live flames. But before that, he poked around at his parents’ place, trying to sift through the smoldering mess and finding nothing to retrieve.

All of his dad’s musical gear and his mom’s cameras, gone. Documents and photographs belonging to his paternal grandmother, who died last year, gone. His parents’ cars, gone. And Rohan’s NBA Finals championship ring commemorating his work with the Lakers in the Orlando bubble during the COVID pandemic in 2020, gone too.

“I’ve been telling people we lost everything,” Rohan said. “And I’m not [B.S.-ing].”

About a couple miles away on Morado Place, Tammy Cognetta fled early Wednesday morning with her viola but not her mellophone – the instrument that she and her husband, Ken Kurisu, both played as members of the Trojan Marching Band in the 1970s.

With embers flying in the dark early morning, they corralled both their huskies and two of their cats, but a third – an orange tabby – bolted. They’ve been searching in animal shelters, but for the heartbreaking amount of orange tabbies that have been brought in, none is theirs. They’re still hopeful though. They’re hopeful about everything, reminding themselves that the band never loses.

Cynthia Wiese, their neighbor on Maiden Lane and fellow Trojan Marching Band alumna, got out with Duke and Savannah, her two “morkies,” maltese-and-yorkie-mixed siblings.

Wiese, who played flute and, one year, tuba, and who worked as an executive assistant to the band’s director before taking at job at Jet Propulsion Laboratory two years ago, lost the home she’d lived in since 1998.

A long time, she acknowledged, but not as long as her neighbors, one of whom lived on Maiden Lane all her life and another who’d been there for more than 40 years. “I’m the newbie,” Wiese said, reminiscing about all the good times at her place, including so many great parties friends started to say: “What happens at Cynthia’s, stays at Cynthia’s.”

Aaron Heisen, a colleague and talented up-and-coming sports reporter who covers UCLA men’s basketball for the Southern California News Group, has been thinking about how, during COVID, he’d go hang with his grandparents, Fran and Roger Diamond, outside on their patio of their Pacific Palisades home, together but socially distanced. And how they always spent Thanksgiving there. And how you could see Catalina Island on a clear day.

That house, and his own family’s and his cousin’s too, were among the more than 5,000 structures damaged or destroyed in the Palisades fire. Aaron and his dad, Christopher Heisen, left early Tuesday afternoon, out an abundance of caution. They beat most of the traffic, Aaron said, and fully expected they’d be back. His dad brought their dog and his computer and not much else. Aaron had just a couple changes of clothes to work out in and to wear to cover UCLA’s 94-75 loss to Michigan at Pauley Pavilion later that evening.

So while Mick Cronin was railing against his players, complaining “the toughest guy in the room can’t be me every day,” Aaron was learning that fire had destroyed his home – and filing his game story. If you want to talk about tough.

The Palisades Recreation Center that Lakers coach JJ Redick mentioned last week when he talked to reports about losing 20 years of memories when the Pacific Palisades house he was renting burned down? Like so many other kids in the neighborhood, Aaron grew up there. Played there, coached there and recently, worked part-time there.

“JJ actually was gonna coach his sons this season,” Aaron said. “And he was at all their flag football games, even being so busy, because I think he understands what kind of community it is; it’s amazing.”

OVERWHELMING OUTPOURING

There are GoFundMe campaigns for all of these folks that have, in a few days, raised between $12,700 and, in Rohan’s family’s case, $67,000.

Lakers’ star Anthony Davis’ $20,000 donation had something to do with that. His teammates Jarred Vanderbilt and Jaxson Hayes also chipped in with $4,000 and $1,500.

“There’s a certain sense of guilt knowing that other friends don’t know the Anthony Davises of the world and players who make a lot of money and are able to contribute what they did,” said Rohan, who’s especially blown away by the “super-sweet” help from strangers, and so he’s turned around and donated his own money toward his friends’ GoFundMe accounts.

Aaron said the members of his fantasy football league wasted no time starting a group chat without him so they could arrange their own unsolicited donation – $3,500 via Venmo. Fate gave him an even better surprise: When he rode a bike up to his house last week, he found the ADU he’d been living in on his parents’ property almost untouched, the only building on the block still standing.

And members of the Trojan Marching Band family have stepped up as though they are, in fact, family. This group spanning generations that’s come together over the years for births and funerals, for vacations and USC games – and, yes, for parties at Cynthia’s – they’ve gotten in touch from all over the world. Donated clothes and money and started GoFundMe campaigns. Opened their homes.

Said Wiese: “I just hope that everyone else who is struggling because of their loss has a community like this. Whether it’s a family or a sports team or a club or a sewing group, whatever it is, everyone needs a community.

“And I’ll tell you what, so many of my life lessons came from the Trojan Marching Band. Resilience, strength, persistence, practice …  and so now here I am, homeless. And I’m being resilient, and I’m being strong. And I am leaning on everything I learned from the Trojan Marching Band.

“At USC, our moniker is ‘Fight On.’ So that’s what we’re going to do.”