GLENDALE : Teacher Gets Fresh Outlook After the Fire

Sharon Taylorson is happy to report that there is life after the fires.

Resuming her teaching duties at Glendale High School this week turned out to be more of a blessing than a burden for Taylorson, who lost her $550,000 home near Pasadena in last month’s Altadena blaze.

“It’s been good to be back,” the 38-year-old chemistry and earth-science teacher said Friday. “My focus had been just all fire.”

Taylorson admits that shifting her attention to her 180 students was difficult on her first day back Tuesday.

“Somebody would ask me something (about the blaze), and I would start crying,” she said.

Taylorson had resided at her now-bulldozed home in the 2900 block of Clarmeya Lane since she married her 59-year-old husband seven years ago. George Taylorson, a theater and TV production teacher in Fountain Valley, had previously owned it for 26 years.

She recalls the morning rush and confusion on Oct. 27, when winds swept flames toward her neighborhood and residents were forced to evacuate their belongings, horses and other pets.

“It was hectic and real smoky,” Taylorson said. “The horses went kind of wild. It was hard to catch them because of the fire.

“I went ahead and grabbed the albums,” she said. But later, “I was in the house wandering around in a daze. I couldn’t figure out what to take.”

Saved from the destruction were two Boxers, Skeeter and Penney, and four of the Taylorsons’ horses: Macho, Star, Cochise and Goldie--all spotted Appaloosas. Their oldest horse at 31, Princess, died a week later from smoke inhalation.

Also recovered from the ashes was a steel bear trap--last year’s Christmas gift from Sharon Taylorson to her husband.

Before returning to Glendale High this week, she said she was comforted by her students and peers who had given her $1,600 in donations and a 2-by-3-foot card that reads: “We are all thinking of you.”

“This is such a warm and friendly school,” she said. “I was overwhelmed. . . . I told them how much I appreciated that.”

Despite the loss of her home, the teacher says she and her husband intend to rebuild with their insurance money. They have been living in a mobile home on their property since a week after the blaze.

“It is so good to be in your own place, to be on your own land--even though there’s nothing there,” she said.

“I know that God has taken care of us throughout the whole thing. . . . You just start a new life and go on.”