‘I’m out of work. I have no home to make.’

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Rancho Bernardo:

LeAnn Sullivan, 46, who lost her home on Cabela Drive in Rancho Bernardo, was in line at 6:30 a.m. today at the Rancho Bernardo service center. She described herself as a homemaker, but said, ‘I’m out of work today. I have no home to make. It’s gone.’

She said she and her husband, Paul, 47, who is the chief financial officer for the YMCA of San Diego County, have been staying at the Sheraton in downtown San Diego to stay away from fires. At first when they fled the fire Sunday, they went to Del Mar to stay with friends, but then they had to evacuate for a second time from that house.

Sullivan said her dog Sydney, an Australian shepherd, saved their lives by barking after a neighbor banging on the door had failed to rouse them. She said they awoke to a firestorm about 4 a.m. Sunday and had only enough time to grab their cat and dog and a few items of clothing before dashing out. They saw their home burning as they left.

‘We need to find out what to do next,’ Sullivan said as she stood in line about 7 a.m. ‘We have no insurance papers, no titles, nothing. When you’re leaving, you get the weirdest things.’

She said she had very few clothes with her.

‘I love to shop and I try to shop for clothes and I just stand there and cry,’ she said. ‘You think, ‘Oh, that shirt looks cute with that skirt.’ And then you think, ‘Oh, that’s gone.’ ‘

On Saturday, the Sullivans are supposed to go on a weeklong cruise to Mexico. They never thought to get insurance, Sulllivan said. ‘They’re like, ‘You use it or you lose it,’ ‘ she said of the cruise company. ‘And we’re like, fine. We’ll be on that boat naked.’

The Sullivans and their dog, Sydney, walked out of the service center about 10 a.m., after spending a little more than an hour inside. They had also managed to talk their way into taking a peek at their house.

‘We got to see our home,’ Sullivan said. ‘Our patio furniture’s still there but our house is gone. Isn’t that funny?’

The Sullivans moved into their two-story home five years ago. It featured four bedrooms, two and a half baths and a pool. They remodeled about a year ago. Now, she said, only two fireplaces were left standing -- at least that’s all she could see because the rubble was so thick.

‘My family-room wall had two crosses that were candleholders and they’re still there hanging on the fireplace wall, but that’s all that’s left,’ she said.

She left the service center with a white plastic bag full of handbooks and handouts on how to rebuild. She’d been given various other things, including a notepad and animal crackers, which she planned to feed to Sydney, who she said was too nervous to eat anything but treats. They’d also been given information on such things as how to list the contents of their house, how to find a contractor, how to avoid being ripped off by contractors or fake insurance companies.

Sullivan expressed confidence about avoiding those pitfalls, saying they had good referrals, good contacts in the city and had had all their questions answered in the service center.

Inside the service center, the Sullivans spoke to people whose homes had burned in 2003. The advice they gave, Sullivan said, was ‘take it day by day, and in time it will get better, week by week.’

They also ran into her next-door neighbors. ‘It was nice to be able to make sure they’re OK. Even though we lost everything, we’re lucky to have the clothes on our back. We’re still OK,’ she said.

Sullivan said her husband was with the local Rotary Club on Saturday, building homes in Mexico. The Sullivans and three other families in the group lost their homes.

‘We were helping the homeless Saturday and were homeless Monday,’ she said.

Wiping the running mascara from her eyes, she described the service center as ‘great, they were fabulous.’

‘We’re going to make it. That’s what I can tell you,’ she said.

She said they would rebuild their home on the same ground where it once stood, partly out of necessity: ‘We’ve got a mortgage there.’

But the game plan for now is finding alternate housing. ‘We’ve got to find a place to live,’ she said. ‘That’s our next priority.’

Sullivan said she grew up in Kansas and had lived through horrible tornados, but had never lost a home.

‘I never want to go through that again,’ she said of the fire. ‘You can’t imagine a catastrophe. You can see it, watch it, like when your friends’ parents die and you don’t know what to say. Everything is gone.... We’ll just live day to day. You’re numb and in shock.’

-- Tami Abdollah