Victim, 79, Dies as Clutter Slows Firefighters

Outside Chloris King’s Point Loma home Tuesday, flies buzzed amid the garbage bins where she had stashed her food for years. Old magazines and stacks of pet food crammed the small front porch.

Inside, a 6-foot wall of dirt-caked pie tins and trash blocked the kitchen door and window where firefighters had tried to force an entry the night before.

King, 79, who lived without gas or electricity on the otherwise well-manicured block, died of smoke inhalation about 11 p.m. Monday when a candle set her bedroom on fire, Fire Department spokesman Tom Morris said.

Firefighters responded to neighbors’ reports of smoke within minutes, but the rescue attempt was far from ordinary. Piles of garbage barricaded the back door, and when firefighters finally forced their way through the front, they tripped repeatedly over heaps of refuse before finding King in the cluttered bedroom.

King was pronounced dead at the scene at 11:16 p.m., a spokesman for the medical examiner’s office said.

Though the physical remainders of King’s unusual life conjure up images of a cloistered fanatic, Chloris King was no recluse.

Neighbors--who hadn’t been inside the modest white house for 20 years and were shocked by the advanced state of decay Tuesday--described King as a generous woman who bought gifts for the whole block at Christmas, was active in politics and the local block watch, and looked after their pets whenever they went away.

“She was a wonderful neighbor, very helpful,” said Deana Sanders, who lives next to King’s brush-covered house on Charles Street. “She always looked out for everybody on the street. She always remembered everybody in the neighborhood at Christmastime and would always give my kids and everybody presents--even the dog.

“She just had her own thoughts about how she wanted to live. I think we sort of respected her choices.”

Though the Fire Department received a complaint in mid-August about rubbish, weeds and brush outside the home, no action had been taken, a fire hazards adviser said. Neighbors never filed complaints about the inside of King’s home, according to the city Housing Department.

Some neighbors who had been close to King since she moved into the house with her parents in the mid-1950s expressed concern for her health and safety over the years. But King would respond by snubbing them for a while.

“When she made up her mind about something, nobody could change it,” said Chris Baldwin, who lives with her husband, Dave, in an immaculate house with close-cropped grass and a white picket fence.

“Dave would get after Chloris, and she’d get mad and wouldn’t come to see us for a few months, until she needed batteries put in a flashlight or something,” she said. “When (the other neighbors) said something to her about it, she said, ‘Oh, you and the Baldwins are just neatniks.’ But nobody realized how bad it was.”

“Nobody’s been in for 20 years. She wouldn’t let you in,” added Dave Baldwin, who helped put the front door back up Tuesday at the request of King’s out-of-town nephew, to keep strangers away.

The Baldwins said King was legally blind and had arthritis, but she walked up and down the street every evening, followed by her cats and a row of other neighborhood felines whom she fed regularly. She often participated in voter registration drives, and used to organize picnics for the neighborhood children.

“When she’d walk with that cat, she’d stop and visit with everybody on the street,” Chris Baldwin said. “If anyone got sick on the street, Chloris got a card and took it around and had everybody sign it.”

When she had a working fridge, she even made everyone on the block ladyfinger cakes, Dave Baldwin said.

But Tuesday, clues of King’s lifestyle without electricity were everywhere. Stacked against the rear kitchen window, and active with the movement of tiny bugs, was a looming wall of discarded pie tins from ready-made grocery store pies. Large garbage bins in her yard were piled high with untouched eggs, cheese spread and jars of lemonade.

Everywhere were signs of her love for animals: dozens of cans of cat food piled high in bags and boxes, cat dishes stacked on the front porch, and rusted tins of dog food from years past. Lying in the rotten leaves and trash in the front yard was a note from a neighbor: “Chloris--Would you feed Jellico until Sunday?”

Firefighters told neighbors they believe one of King’s cats knocked over a candle in her bedroom while she slept Monday night.

The cats escaped the fire--which only caused $1,000 in damage to the house--unharmed.

Tuesday, a neighbor came to take King’s big orange cat, Patty, away to her house to live.

Though King has a brother in Arkansas, neighbors say they had a falling-out years ago. A nephew out of town was contacted about her death, however, Dave Baldwin said.

It is unclear where King got the money she used to live.

“She seemed to get money every now and then. But then she would spend it kind of erratically,” Baldwin said. “She used to go and get all kinds of gadgets at the Pic and Save.”

“People in the neighborhood have contacted the Department of Social Services. She wouldn’t accept any help,” said Chris Baldwin, who added that King used to do secretarial work on a part-time basis.

The neighbors on one side of King paid her water bill from time to time. But King lived without gas or electricity for almost five years, the Baldwins said.

A neighborhood crime watch sticker could be seen pasted to the glass of a kitchen window Tuesday, where someone had ripped an opening in the dirt-caked screen. And, on the front porch, pamphlets on how to contact police in an emergency lay scattered in the debris. Neighbors added that, before she had her electricity cut off more than four years ago, King often kept lights burning out front as a safety precaution.

“We don’t know. But I really think she got mad at the gas and electric company,” Dave Baldwin said. “About that time they raised the rates. We told her she couldn’t live without gas and electricity. And she said she could, and she did.”