AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Six months ago, fierce Santa Ana winds whipped the Palisades and Eaton fires into deadly infernos that destroyed thousands of homes. Surprisingly, many precious things survived the fire that you'd think would have burned - family photos, kids' art, postcards, even pages of old sheet music. Reporter Steven Cuevas has the story about one Altadena resident's quest to reunite these fragile keepsakes with their owners.
STEVEN CUEVAS, BYLINE: When I first meet up with Claire Schwartz, she's got a pickup to make in North Pasadena, right at the edge of where the Eaton fire stopped.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOG BARKING)
CLAIRE SCHWARTZ: Nina?
NINA RAJ: Hello. Hi.
SCHWARTZ: Hi. I'm Claire.
CUEVAS: Nina Raj answers the door. She's got a child's drawing in her hand that she found in her backyard a few days after the fire. It's got a bunch of stick figures on it and the names Adonis on one side and Joseph on the other.
SCHWARTZ: Oh, a meeting.
CUEVAS: Oh, a meeting.
SCHWARTZ: And so...
CUEVAS: Schwartz is something of a detective. Right after the fires, she started seeing posts on social media from people who were finding other people's photos in their yards. Being a photo nerd, she offered to take them, clean them up, store them and look for the owners. And she's been pretty successful. Her project, Eaton Fire Found Photos, has reunited at least a couple dozen locals with their keepsakes, including Adonis and Joseph.
SCHWARTZ: We were able to track down both the artist and the recipient of the art.
CUEVAS: A local pizzeria owner saw her Instagram posts and remembered that his daughter goes to school with a kid named Adonis. He connected her with a teacher who connected her with the families.
SCHWARTZ: Adonis, the artist - his family home burned. Joseph, the recipient - their home is still there, but they're in the process of remediation, so everyone's displaced.
CUEVAS: Schwartz lives in South Altadena. Her home survived but suffered extensive smoke damage. Many other houses burned down altogether. And the neighborhood is a landscape of cleared lots, piles of rubble and work crews, like this one, clearing out what's left.
(SOUNDBITE OF MACHINERY BEEPING)
CUEVAS: One of the homes still standing belongs to Houri Marganian and her family. When the fire neared their house, they fled with several carloads of personal belongings, including boxes of photos.
HOURI MARGANIAN: I had about 10 of these.
CUEVAS: Just simple boxes.
MARGANIAN: Simple boxes - perfectly organized and...
CUEVAS: As the sun sets and the winds howled, they raced down the hill. Marganian's boxes of family photos filled with thousands of images chronicling her family's history in the U.S. and her native Lebanon were stuffed into the trunk of her husband's car.
MARGANIAN: He left the neighborhood, turned on Washington and Woodland when the trunk popped open. And I was trying to collect it with my 12-year-old, suffocating with the smoke, and we could see, like, the embers coming down already.
CUEVAS: But then, a few days later, she got texts from friends who had spotted some of her photos on social media.
MARGANIAN: Honeymoon pictures, pregnancy pictures - and then that's how I connected with Claire.
CUEVAS: But Claire Schwartz has only been able to return a fraction of Marganian's lost photos, and many of those were damaged. Still, she's grateful.
MARGANIAN: I met some great people through this whole experience, and I'm just glad our house is here. My heart goes out to the ones that weren't as fortunate.
CUEVAS: The project has also helped Schwartz process the loss of her neighborhood. At a time when so many within the burn zone feel powerless, overwhelmed or just sad, at least Schwartz feels like she's doing something that helps.
SCHWARTZ: It's not putting a roof over anybody's head, but it maybe is bringing back a little bit of normalcy or comfort to somebody who might really need it.
CUEVAS: She says that's been helpful to her own grief, as well. For NPR News, I'm Steven Cuevas in Altadena.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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