Vacant country store stands as an eerie reminder of girl’s death in 2005 rock slide

Across the shop’s windows are spray-painted letters spelling “CLOSED,” and a “Keep Out” sign is pasted to a concrete barrier separating the property from the street. But signs alerting people to store hours and accepted credit cards are still eerily plastered to the shop’s door.

The store is like the ghost of a Silverado Canyon family’s past, a sad and perverse reminder of the death of a teen 11 years ago in a rock slide that caught her in its path as she was doing homework in the upper residential portion of the building. It also speaks to rules that have prevented any changes to the landscape for fear that the hillside isn’t stable enough to withstand them.

So here it sits, the former Shadybrook Country Store, seeming as though it could still be readied for business, when in fact it can’t be moved, bulldozed or reopened.

Caitlin Oto was a 16-year-old junior at El Modena High School in Orange when on Feb. 20, 2005, a boulder crashed into the structure. She was trying to escape through a door when the rock crushed her. Her death was instant.

Her stepfather, who lived in the building with Caitlin’s mother, has declined to comment for this story, his pain still raw after his business and personal life were shattered with the slip of a hillside.

Annual rains can make the canyon, a close-knit and picturesque community most of the year, a hazard. Some years are deadlier than others.

Although someone is keeping up on the annual property taxes of slightly more than $500 a year, the money that it would take to secure the hillside in order to do something with the land is not there.

So the property remains frozen in time, boulder still inside as if it and the demolished building have paired up in a sort of theater of the bizarre.

“It’s just sitting there and it feels weird,” said neighbor Chalynn Marie Peterson, director at the Silverado-Modjeska Recreation and Park District, of the rock-embedded house. “It’s creepy and no one can figure out what to do with it.”

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The north-facing hillside above the Shadybrook Country Store is pocketed with jagged rocks and boulders. In 2001, heavy rain and mudslides had caused rocks to crash onto two homes. The same two homes were struck by rocks and boulders four years later, on the Sunday night when Caitlin was killed.

The second house was eventually torn down. Two other houses had sustained damage.

It was a little after 9 p.m. Heavy rain was pummeling the canyon. A boulder was loosened, sending rocks and mud into the second-story residence above the wooden general store.

Caitlin was finishing homework on the computer in her bedroom when boulders and rocks ripped through the roof and walls.

Caitlin Oto, shown in a 2004 yearbook photo from El Modena High School.

(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)

Stephen Carter, Caitlin’s stepfather, was five minutes from closing the store. Neither he nor his wife was injured.

Peterson and her husband were returning from dinner in Orange when they saw emergency vehicles parked near their home, which was four doors down from the general store.

She and her husband walked up to the property and began chatting with neighbors.

“Two of the neighbors came out and said, ‘We dodged another one. There was a boulder in the market,’” Peterson said.

“Just as we were done making a joke, I remember someone saying, ‘Where’s Caitlin?’ Then it hit us. People made a beeline to go inside. It was crazy. It was an emotional scene,” Peterson said.

Over the next few days, people in the idyllic canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains, which at the time was home to about 1,400 residents, left flowers at a makeshift memorial for Caitlin. The community raised about $25,000 for her parents, since the store had to be shut down after the mudslides.

To mark the first anniversary of Caitlin’s death, former canyon resident Ray Verdugo organized a candlelight walk to raise money to build a sturdier, more permanent memorial — a rock etched with a picture of Caitlin — in front of the store.

At the time of the accident, Caitlin’s mother and stepfather had owned the country store for more than five years. Community members would gather there as their horses waited outside.

The Oto family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against NRLL Inc. and Silverado Canyon Limited Partnership as well as the county, alleging that nothing was done to stabilize the hill after the 2001 rock slide.

The county had sold its land in the area to the two companies shortly after that slide.

The complaint sought unspecified monetary damages for Caitlin’s death. Jennifer Oto and Carter also claimed property damage and lost profits tied to the loss of their home and retail business.

After about three years of litigation, a settlement was negotiated on behalf of Caitlin’s family in 2008. The corporate owners of two parcels where the boulders emanated were the only contributors to the settlement, according to Irvine attorney Larry Eisenberg.

“This was an extremely sad case,” said Eisenberg, who represented Jennifer and Carl Oto, Caitlin’s biological parents, and Carter, who had helped raise Caitlin since she was 5.

“What happened was obviously a horrendous tragedy for the family. That a 16-year-old girl could be doing homework and a boulder crashes through killing her? It’s uncomprehensible.

“The issue was that the county knew that this was a risk, and the landowners had a duty and an obligation to make sure the land was safe,” Eisenberg said. “You can’t just allow boulders to fall from a property and injure or kill people.””

After the tragedy, Jennifer Oto and Carter moved to another place in the canyon, but soon after, residents noticed that Jennifer was gone. Carter, who declined to comment, still lives in the canyon.

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A geologist’s report said the rocks above the Oto property after the 2005 accident posed a significant risk of more destructive slides.

The county said construction on the property couldn’t start until retaining walls or nets were installed to make the canyon wall more stable. Peterson said the $25,000 raised for the family didn’t come close to covering the cost.

Officials red-tagged the structure, deeming the property too severely damaged and thus too dangerous to inhabit.

Today, the assessed value of the property is $11,825.

Meanwhile, property tax payments have been paid by an unknown source. A bill of $256.92 was paid in December.

The future of the property remains unknown, said a woman at the county assessor’s office who added that a “calamity” designation was filed on the property. Owners who suffer damage to their property as a result of a fire, earthquake or flood may be eligible for certain limited forms of property tax relief. The amount of damage must exceed $10,000.

The county has remained well aware of the property over the years, said Shannon Widor, strategic communications officer at OC Public Works, who detailed the following actions:

On Nov. 11, 2014, the department received a complaint about the property and opened a code enforcement case. The complaint stated that the abandoned house, uninhabited for the past decade, is a potential fire hazard.

Less than a month later, Public Works performed an inspection at the property and sent a notice of violation. The department’s building inspection services performed another inspection on Jan. 7, 2015, and a copy of the original notice of violation was sent to the owner at a new address. Three months later, inspectors observed some progress with weeds and trash removal from the property.

Additional notifications were sent to Carter, the property owner of record, in June and September of 2015. On Jan. 28, a notice of violation and a $100 civil citation, meaning that the owner is showing minimum to no efforts to bring violations into compliance, was sent to the property owner. Several onsite attempts to contact the owner were unsuccessful.

Eisenberg said that since the county red-tagged the property as dangerous and uninhabitable, “they should bear the cost of tearing it down for the benefit of the neighboring residents and community.”

But what will remain is the bronze plaque shaded under an oak tree — serving as a permanent remembrance of a girl described as someone who seemed to always be smiling and laughing.

“She was a driven young woman,” said Peterson, noting her studiousness. “She was really quiet and shy, but I was excited to get to know her. This has all been so tragic.”