ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-NINE days after the fire, around 70 seniors from John Muir High School rise from their seats inside Pasadena’s historic Civic Auditorium. Like their 200 classmates seated around them, their dark blue gowns are draped with colorful ribbons and stoles. Blue-and-yellow tassels hang from their graduation caps.
“Give these students a round of applause for their perseverance, for staying focused and for overcoming adversity,” Muir’s principal, Dr. Lawton Gray, says as raucous cheers echo through the theater.
Five months ago, these 70-some seniors lost or were displaced from their homes when one of the most destructive fires in California history ripped through their town. Jasmine Collins, a three-sport standout, is one of them. Now, she glances around the auditorium, her eyes welling with tears. She’s surrounded by the most important people in her life. Her friends. Her family. Her coaches and teachers. She adjusts her graduation cap, which she’s lovingly decorated with a photo collage and the words, “To grow is to change.”
The moment is just like she’d imagined it would be ever since her mom, Brenda Sharpe, first told her about her own graduation from Muir nearly 30 years ago. But nothing her mom told her could have prepared her for the months leading up to this day.
Jasmine’s family has lived in Altadena for generations. They lost everything in the Eaton fire. Their homes. Old photographs. Their favorite places. On the way to the ceremony today, Brenda hugged nearly everyone who crossed her path. She knows this town and its people. They know her. Her father graduated from Muir, as did her two oldest daughters. She was classmates with so many parents and faculty gathered here today. Jasmine included many of them in the collage on her graduation cap: Dr. Gray, head water polo coach Micol Issa, athletic director Alfredo Resendiz.
They all came back to their hometown because they believe Altadena is special, a place where families put down roots and stayed. In the weeks and months after the fire, they tracked every student’s whereabouts, feeling keenly the loss of each family that left. For the students who made it here to graduation, and especially for the 70 or so who stand, today is a celebration. As they move their tassels from right to left and toss their caps into the air, they cry and hug and take in this moment of reprieve from living in hotel rooms, waiting in line at donation centers and sitting in unending uncertainty.
Their families stand and cheer the new graduates. Today is for them, too. They live with what was lost every day, not just in homes and possessions, but in the places and people that made their community what it was. Five months after the fire, a new reality is setting in. For each person, moving forward means answering impossible questions.
When so much has been lost, what reason do any of us have to stay? And if we stay, how do we hold on to all that was precious about Altadena before 6:30 pm on Jan. 7, when sparks from a transmission tower likely ignited a fire that decimated our beautiful town?
It is possible to rebuild houses, schools and churches. But is it possible to rebuild what’s been lost?
THE NIGHT OF the fire, Jasmine is at a friend’s house when she first sees the flames. She has a feeling this isn’t like other fires she’s heard about in the Angeles National Forest, although she’s too young to have experienced those. Another fire has been raging in Los Angeles since a little after 10 this morning, and the images on the news and social media are scary.
Jasmine calls her older sister, Janiya, to pick her up. At home, she pleads with her family to evacuate. “I kept saying to Jas, ‘We’re gonna be OK; the fire is gonna burn through the mountains like always,'” Brenda recalls.
“But she was afraid, and that fear is what we should have listened to earlier,” she says. “It wouldn’t have stopped the devastation, but at least she would have felt safe immediately.”
NINE DAYS AFTER the fire, Brenda and her three youngest are in a motel room near the freeway in Pasadena. The space is nothing like the three-bedroom house they were renting, but that home is uninhabitable. Each day, she asks herself, “How do I make this situation bearable for my kids?”
She blows up air mattresses and drapes them in multicolored quilts from donation centers. She helps Jasmine carve out a space that is just hers, where she can be quiet and crochet, draw or write poetry. “When her mind is racing, she needs to let her creative side flow out,” Brenda says.
Brenda has been back to her neighborhood only once since the fire. What wasn’t burned was sopping and moldy and smelled like smoke. But in one room, she saw two houseplants she had been watching for a housekeeping client. They were still alive. She poured a bit of water into the pots and carried them to her truck.
The family keeps what’s left of their belongings in that truck. They don’t have much. Jasmine was the only one who packed a bag when they evacuated. She stuffed a change of clothes, her swimsuit, goggles, swim cap, softball glove, schoolbooks, a crochet needle and yarn into her water polo bag, navy blue with the University of Michigan-style “M” for Muir on the side.
Jasmine has been withdrawn since the fire. She’s tired of adults telling her that it will all work out, that things will get better. Nine days feels like a lifetime ago. Back then, she was outgoing and joyful, known for showing up to school with a purple crew cut or wearing a unicorn onesie. Back then, she was looking forward to attending Cal State Northridge in the fall. The school is only 30 minutes from Altadena, but even that seemed too far away. Now, she’s not sure about anything. She’s barely slept. She hasn’t seen her friends. She doesn’t know where the family will go next.
Schools will reopen in a few weeks. Brenda wonders how she’ll manage the choreography of it all. It’s hard to plan for anything beyond today. She doesn’t know where or when she’ll find more work. All but two of her clients’ homes burned. But she sees no other choice than to stay. She is determined to give her kids the life she wants for them, the beautiful life she had here.
Brenda’s grandparents moved to the area in 1952, one of the first Black families to buy a house on tiny Glenrose Avenue, in a neighborhood that existed outside of the restrictive housing covenants that governed the rest of Pasadena at the time. Her parents purchased their home in northwest Altadena in the mid-1970s. By 1980, Altadena’s population was more than 40% Black, and generation after generation, Black families owned their homes at a far greater rate than the national average, passing the wealth held in those homes on to their children.
When she was a kid, Brenda and her brothers spent their summers swimming at Loma Alta Park, a short walk from their home. They played baseball there in the spring and hiked Chaney Trail, winding northeast from the park into the Angeles National Forest.
She graduated from Muir in 1996. She was a cheerleader, and when she talks about her high school years now, it’s like she’s back there again, singing the fight song, performing at pep rallies. “We drank out of the water hose. Always walking from one end of Altadena to the other, riding our bikes, eating honeysuckle and picking citrus and pomegranates off people’s trees,” she says. “Altadena was beautiful. The people were beautiful.”
IT’S BEEN ELEVEN days since the fire. For many Altadenans, dates are no longer defined by a calendar but instead by how much time has passed since that fateful Tuesday. There is only life before the fire and life after the fire.
Jasmine and her family are at a picnic organized by Micol Issa, the head water polo coach. The school was hit hard — one in four students lost their homes or were displaced — and the aquatics program was hit even harder. Twenty-one athletes lost everything. Most of them lived near Loma Alta Park and its pool, in the area that sustained the most damage.
This is the first time many of them have seen each other since. They cry, laugh and talk about the favorite places they’ve lost.
“Nearly every anchor these kids have ever known, the places where they felt safe and felt joy are gone,” Issa says. “I try to remind them that we can be devastated about the loss of a place like a park or a pool and remember how we felt at that park. But a lot of our memories center around people, and you still have those people.”
She looks around the picnic and sees the impact the pool has had on so many of her athletes. Jasmine didn’t know it when she tried out freshman year, but she was becoming part of a rich history of Black athletes who learned to swim at Loma Alta and played water polo at Muir. “People talk about wanting to diversify the sport and Muir has been doing it for decades,” Issa says.
Muir’s walls are lined with images of famous Black alumni. Jackie Robinson graduated in 1936, a year after his older brother Mack Robinson, who finished second behind Jesse Owens in the 200 meters at the Berlin Olympics. Science fiction author and 1995 MacArthur fellow Octavia Butler graduated in 1965, five years before a landmark federal court decision made Pasadena the first city on the West Coast ordered to desegregate its schools. Rodney King was in the class of 1984.
The school is still closed, but sports resume next week. The girls’ water polo team is having its best season in four years. A conference championship is within its grasp. Issa wants to give her athletes something positive to look forward to, but she wants the decision to be theirs. She and her assistant coach gather the players and ask if they want to finish out their season.
“We said, ‘We’re not asking you to win. Do you want to play?'” Issa says. Jasmine is quiet. Her teammates notice. The girls look at each other and a few offer opinions. They don’t know what to expect from themselves or how they’ll respond to the pressure once they get in the water. Issa tells them their competitors may not care what they’re going through. “In life, they might have empathy for what you’ve lost,” she says. “But in the pool, they might take advantage of your vulnerability.” She tells them the games will be hard, but worth playing.
“A big feeling in a loss this monumental is feeling like you’ve really lost everything,” Issa says. “But if they can continue playing, if they have this, then they have something. And they haven’t lost everything.”
FOURTEEN DAYS AFTER the fire, Alfredo Resendiz is driving through Altadena, surveying the damage. He’s been doing this nearly every day. He wants to see the devastation with his own eyes. During the fire, he spent all night hosing down his mom’s house. His ex-wife’s parents lost their home. So did his niece.
Like many of his peers at Muir, the athletic director left his hometown for college but returned to give back to the community he feels gave so much to him. It’s hard to process what’s happened to this place he holds so dear. As he drives north, the blocks seem almost blurry, like they’re passing by at high speed. He slows down, but the blur is still there. He knows these streets, knows their stories. But he barely recognizes them.
“This is where it began,” Resendiz says.
He parks near a sign for Eaton Canyon, a beloved nature preserve located at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. The air still smells like fire. The canyon’s walls, green and lush with growth just two weeks ago, are brown and marred with the charred remains of chaparral, sage and wildflower bushes. “The Altadena apocalypse,” he says.
He drives on, past rows of blackened brick chimneys and concrete slabs reaching skyward from piles of twisted metal and ash, incomplete outlines of once familiar homes. He wonders when the clearing will begin. His phone rings constantly. A local sports reporter asks when Muir’s games will be rescheduled. Another school’s AD offers the use of her gym for a senior night celebration.
At a light on East Washington Boulevard, Resendiz notices one of his former students next to him. He rolls down his passenger window. “What’s going on?” he yells. “How are you?”
“Good.” she responds. “You? Did you lose?”
“I’m good,” he says. “Did your dad lose?”
She shakes her head no. Resendiz rolls up the window. He lets out a deep breath.
“That’s always the first question,” he says. “It’s heart-wrenching.”
Did you lose?
Those three words have become shorthand between neighbors. There is a knowing in this way of asking, an unspoken understanding that the loss in question approaches totality. A home. A business. A life. The full question is too much to ask of anyone.
SIXTEEN DAYS AFTER the fire, Jasmine and her teammates step off a bus and walk toward the pool to take on Burbank High School. Resendiz chartered the bus so the girls could ride to the game together as a team. He wanted to give his athletes a win before the first whistle.
From the moment Jasmine stepped onto the bus, she’s been quiet. Her eyes rarely lift from the pool deck. Her teammates and coaches try to buoy her spirits, but they know what she needs right now is time. “It’s hard to see her hurting like this,” Issa says. “She’s a big part of why our team wanted to be here today. They wanted to show up for her.”
Muir has only nine players tonight, not even enough to sub a full lineup when lungs start burning and legs get tight. Late in the first quarter, the Mustangs are up 2-1 and they’re playing smart. Issa was right. Burbank is doing everything they can to frustrate Muir’s players. But despite Burbank’s aggressive, physical game plan, the Stangs are keeping their calm.
Near the pool, Dr. Gray’s phone rings. He motions to Resendiz, and the AD drops his head. Another student’s parents have called to say they’ve moved away, this time across the country, and their daughter won’t be returning to Muir.
Dr. Gray leans over his laptop and makes a note in a color-coded spreadsheet. He’s tracking each student’s story: where they lived, how their home fared in the fire, where they are now, where they plan to be when school reopens. He’s received dozens of calls like this over the past two weeks. Each call feels like a monumental loss for the school and an even deeper cut to the community.
“When generations are lost like this, it breaks my heart,” Issa says. “They’re what makes this place unique. A lot of the Black families who came here found something special and continued to build and pour into this community. If those families don’t come back, then what?”
Jasmine scores on a penalty shot with two minutes left in the first half and Brenda leaps into the air. She hugs every parent around her. Muir wins 10-2.
After the game, the team changes out of their suits, then gathers around Issa in a semicircle. Jasmine sits in a chair next to her, her head down and her eyes cast toward the ground. Issa places her hand on Jasmine’s shoulder.
“We’re so super proud of you all,” Issa says. “How do you feel?” She gives Jasmine’s shoulder a light squeeze.
Jasmine looks up. “I …” She stops. Her eyes fill with tears. She smiles and forms a heart with her hands.
FORTY-EIGHT DAYS after the fire, Jasmine is wearing her new varsity letter jacket, with the Michigan-style “M” on the front and her last name on the back. A few days ago, her coaches surprised her with it. They pitched in to buy it for her. “She hasn’t taken it off since,” Brenda says.
The jacket represents so much to Jasmine. It comforts her to wear it, to wrap herself in a reminder that she hasn’t lost everything, which is important in what Issa calls “the hard stretch” of surviving this fire. “It’s real now,” she says. “Everyone is realizing, ‘This is our life.'”
Money from online fundraisers is drying up. Donation centers are packing up and closing. The rebuilding process is slow. But life and the news cycle roll on.
The people of Altadena know that while their loss feels singular, their pain is not unique. They’re every community facing impossible questions after a loss. They’re Asheville, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene; Waverly, Tennessee, after devastating flooding; Uvalde, Texas, after another deadly school shooting; Paradise, California, after the Camp fire.
“I don’t know that we can hold on to what Altadena was,” Issa says. “But if we’re choosing to stay, then we’re going to have to embrace that it’s never going to be the same again.”
THE SUN IS rising as Brenda leaves to take her son Joshua to school, 50 days after the fire. Yesterday, she ran into the couple who owned the houseplants she rescued from her home. Their house burned, too. She told them their plants had survived. She smiles remembering what it felt like to tell them they hadn’t lost everything.
Now, as she and Joshua approach the truck, they see someone has broken in overnight. Everything inside is gone. Their clothes and shoes. Their blankets. Important paperwork.
Jasmine’s letter jacket.
When she tells her daughter her new jacket is gone, Jasmine is dumbstruck. She can’t imagine that someone would take all they had left. “They could clearly see we were homeless,” she says. “I walked around the block for a while crying.” At school, her friends try to comfort her. When she gets home, Brenda promises her they won’t live out of her truck forever.
“I can’t protect them from any of this,” she says. “That’s the hardest part as a mom.”
ONE HUNDRED DAYS after the fire, lots in Altadena are being cleared. Heavy machinery and demolition crews are everywhere. Issa passes many of the 9,000 destroyed structures on her drive to Muir each morning. Twelve houses burned on her street alone, and many of their remnants still wait to be carried away. Taken in total, the destruction is overwhelming. Each individual clearing brings a sense of optimism.
“There’s something hopeful about the clean slate of cleared lots that’s bringing people peace of mind,” she says. “We’re moving forward.”
In a little over a week, a crew will break ground on the first home to be rebuilt in Altadena. New construction will replace a 100-year-old cabin on West Palm Street, a half mile south of Loma Alta Park. “Altadena is changing,” Resendiz says. “It’s inevitable. Even before the fire, there were signs of loss and change as West Altadena started to gentrify. But that was a trickle. This was an avalanche.”
For weeks after the fire, Resendiz continued to drive around his community. But he can’t bring himself to take those drives anymore. “I’ve fluctuated in weight throughout my life,” Resendiz says. “When I’m heavier, I avoid looking in the mirror. That’s where I am right now with Altadena. I need to look away.”
ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN days after the fire, Jasmine is dancing with her best friend Eva at senior prom. She’s wearing a chic white suit and her favorite hot pink Nikes. Halfway through the dance, she slips into a bathroom and changes into a strapless black dress. She received both outfits at charity events. She and Eva dance and pose in the bathroom mirror and post TikTok videos.
Her friends notice the change. They catch glimpses of the old Jasmine, the confident, funny girl who inspired other kids to join the water polo team just to be around her. She’s still finding her way back to herself, to the girl she was the day before the fire, but in this moment, in her outfit swap and hot pink Nikes, they see her again.
Since spring break, she’s been staying with Eva and her mom, Johanna, who went to Muir with Brenda and is now Jasmine’s golf coach there. With all the moving over the past two months, Jasmine has struggled to stay focused at school. “Jasmine has a hard time in the motels,” Brenda says.
ONE HUNDRED FORTY-NINE days since the fire, Jasmine is outside with her classmates, diplomas in hand, taking photos. She’s posing with Coach Issa and her water polo teammates, and with coach Matt Milton and her softball team. She’s hugging her grandparents and her siblings. Joshua graduated from eighth grade earlier in the day. Janiya can’t stop crying. “I’m just so proud of her,” she says. “We’ve been through a lot, and she’s gonna make it out.”
Jasmine turned down her acceptance to Cal State Northridge. For so long, she wanted nothing more than to stay close to home. But too many of the things that brought her comfort are no longer there.
“Everything here is gone,” Jasmine says. “I want to start new for myself. There’s not really anything to come back to. It’s a time for me to take the next step into life.”
She and Eva will attend Cal Poly Humboldt in Arcata, a 10-hour drive north of Altadena. She hears it’s beautiful. She’s excited to explore Redwood National Park and spend time at the beach. She’s thinking about trying out for softball her sophomore year.
Brenda is heartbroken that Jasmine will be so far away, but she understands. In the meantime, she’ll focus on rebuilding. She and two of her children are still living in the motel. She sees corporations and investment companies buying up the property where she once rode her bike and picked citrus and pomegranates off her neighbors’ trees, but she holds out hope she will find affordable housing. Loma Alta Park reopened last month, and she believes one day she and her family will return to swim in its pool and hike its trails.
On the days when it feels impossible to keep going, she looks at Joshua. She has one more Muir graduation ceremony to attend.
As the crowd outside the Pasadena Civic Auditorium thins, Dr. Gray finds Jasmine who, despite the June temperatures, is wearing a new varsity letter jacket over her gown. It’s not the original, but it has the same Michigan-style “M” on the front and her last name stitched onto the back.
A few weeks ago, Dr. Gray and Coach Issa called Jasmine out of class. “I thought I was in trouble,” Jasmine says. When she arrived, Dr. Gray told Jasmine they had a surprise for her. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he handed her the new jacket, which they ordered the day they learned the other one had been stolen.
She wrapped the jacket around her shoulders and headed back to class, betraying little emotion. When she got back to her classroom, “I started crying so hard,” she says.
Now, draped in her jacket outside the auditorium, she finishes saying her goodbyes. Brenda stands with her family and takes it all in. She doesn’t know when they will be together like this again. She watches as Jasmine and Dr. Gray hug and she’s thankful for everyone who helped them make it to this day.
“I hope to see you soon, Jazzy,” Dr. Gray says. He hopes that, like him, she finds a reason one day to return.
“I’ll see you soon,” Jasmine says, walking away. She stops and looks back at him. “I mean it. I can’t say it will be real soon, but I’ll be back.”
ESPN researcher John Mastroberardino contributed to this story.
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