Surveying his Pasadena street the morning of Thursday, Jan. 9, Antonio Huerta knew he was one of the lucky ones.
His family had been evacuated from their home on Marengo Avenue the day before due to the nearby Eaton Fire. Now allowed back, he watched as droves of desperate Altadena residents were ditching their cars in his neighborhood to get past traffic controls on foot to find out the fate of their homes.
Meanwhile Huerta, coordinator of the charismatic prayer group at Sacred Heart Church in Altadena, was getting one call after another from parishioners with the same bad news: our homes are gone.
That was when he got an idea.
“I decided not to go to work,” said Huerta. “Then I sent out a message with my address: anyone in the area who needs water, coffee, or a place to use the restroom, come on by.”
Sacred Heart had barely been spared from the fires, but was still inside the evacuation zone and unable to host a donation drive. The Huerta house was in the right place at the right time.
Antonio’s children, Gabriela and José Antonio, helped share the message on social media, and prayer groups from around the LA Archdiocese’s San Gabriel Pastoral Region sent it to their contacts.
The message seemed to spread as fast as the nearby Eaton Fire, and pretty soon, the home on Marengo Avenue had become an emergency distribution center: bags of new clothes and tennis shoes, cases of water, food, towels were all neatly organized on tables in front of his house, with the help of his children and wife, Liliana.
“I told them, ‘Look, since you can’t get to the church, you can use my yard,’ ” said Huerta, a native of Mexico City who works at a body shop in San Gabriel. “We became distributors. And then it started multiplying.”
Since Los Angeles County’s “fire siege” began Jan. 7, grassroots efforts among Catholics to collect donations for victims of the Palisades and Eaton Fires have been met with overwhelming generosity, sometimes spilling over into parish halls and school gyms.
Julie Zaller lives on LA’s Westside and runs a “Moms of Westchester and Playa del Rey” Facebook group, where she posted a call for donations the day after the fires started. The overwhelming response led her to call St. Monica’s Preparatory in Santa Monica, where two of her children go to school.
“I told them that I had more and more donations coming in, and it’s good stuff,” said Zaller. The school agreed to let Zaller move the donation drive there, and within 48 hours, deliveries and distributions were underway.
“It started with me, and then I got in over my head,” said Zaller. “So I was looking for an outlet to get the goods to the families.”
On Sunday, Jan. 12, St. Monica’s welcome room had donated meals from the nearby Lemonade Restaurant, snacks, bottled drinks, diapers, and towels. Beyond, the school’s long first floor hallway — and every room on either side — was filled with clothes, toys, and jackets.
Tables and hangers carried a mix of used and new clothes, including some items from the boutique stores’ inventories and samples sent by upscale designers in the area.
“We have a lot of clothes that came in from store owners that decided, ‘You know, we're not going to sell anything right now, we're gonna give it away.”
The center distributed donations to visitors with a “no questions asked” policy. Many were families who lost their homes in the nearby Palisades Fire. Others were friends doing the “shopping” for them.
“Every person that walks in the door has their story and it’s all devastating,” said Zaller.
On Sunday, Dee Rogers drove up to the school from Orange County after learning about the St. Monica center on social media. She was picking up items for five evacuated Altadena families who’d asked her for help, ages 3 to 93.
“I drove up, and they were extremely helpful and warm and caring,” said Rogers. “That brought some comfort to me, and I know this will bring comfort to the families.”
The archdiocese’s Office of Life, Justice, and Peace has seen “overwhelming” responses to what began as modest donation drives at the Pasadena parishes of St. Andrew, St. Philip, and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, according to senior director Michael Donaldson.
In Huerta’s case, his collection benefitted from drop-offs by people in the area who’d collected supplies and “didn’t know where else to leave them.” By Sunday, Jan. 12, he was so overwhelmed by donations that “there was a certain point we had to say, ‘no more!’ ”
The Huertas saw divine intervention at work during the experience. Days before the Eaton Fire started, it was the family’s turn to welcome a pilgrim statue of the Sacred Heart visiting parishioners’ homes for a nine-day family novena. The overnight evacuation order came a few hours after they had finished one of their nightly rosaries with the statue.
Huerta believes the timing wasn’t by accident. He is sure the devotion had a hand in protecting his family’s home from the glowing embers that blew through their street — and in inspiring the impromptu relief operation.
“We’re people of faith, and as part of our prayer group, we’re always praying for the needs of others,” said Huerta. “I think the Lord used us in this moment, because neither I nor my wife planned any of this. We just responded to the circumstances, the needs of the moment.”
The Huertas planned to reopen their front lawn operation the weekend of Jan. 18-19, ready for whatever new surprises show up on Marengo Avenue.
“El Señor multiplicó,” said Huerta in Spanish. “The Lord multiplied.”
