Couple Escaped Fire but Sure Got Burned by Someone

Just your basic apartment dweller’s nightmare:

In 1971, Raoul and Helen Lotos moved into the Bayview apartment complex in Corona del Mar and have lived in the same unit ever since. Then, in the early morning hours of Jan. 15, 1995, a fire in the unit below them routed the Lotoses. No one was hurt and, as for the Lotoses, only a back bedroom sustained damage. Firefighters let them return within a few hours, and the Lotoses spent the next three nights at home.

On the fourth day, however, the apartment management told them their apartment needed to be checked for asbestos contamination. The Lotoses got three free nights in a local hotel, leaving their apartment the morning of Jan. 19.

What they didn’t realize that morning was that they wouldn’t be returning home until May 12. Then, to their horror, they realized when they finally arrived home that dozens of items worth at least $45,000 were missing.

A six-page police report of missing items includes such things as bank notes worth $3,000, an emerald ring, a VCR, cameras, clocks, luggage, antique dolls, kitchen appliances, lamps, a silverware set, glasses, a jewelry box and record albums. The list includes such presumably nonsalable items as high school yearbooks, personal diplomas, paycheck stubs and personal letters. And, for good measure, Mr. Lotos’ spare dentures.

What happened is not really clear. Why it happened may be just as fuzzy.

What the Lotoses know for sure is that the Newport Beach firm of Mission Geoscience was hired to test for asbestos. That firm in turn hired Blake Services Inc. of Placentia to do various tasks.

The Lotoses were told early on that all porous items, such as bedding, clothing and other fabrics, would be discarded because of contamination. All “nonporous” items would be cleaned and stored, they were told.

The Lotoses went along. Their apartment was cordoned off, and the locks were changed. On Jan. 20 of last year, according to Helen Lotos, Western National Properties, which manages the complex for the Irvine Apartment Communities Inc., told the Lotoses that because of contamination they would not be able to return to their apartment to remove anything, even sentimental items. The Lotoses moved in to another apartment in the complex.

Three months later, in late April, the apartment managers told the Lotoses their remaining belongings were being transferred to an empty apartment on the grounds. That was done to facilitate further cleanup in their apartment, Helen Lotos says she was told.

On the day the move occurred, Raoul Lotos was receiving chemotherapy for lymphoma. The treatment schedule precluded Helen from monitoring the transferring of their possessions. When she asked subsequently to go to the apartment to survey her items, the complex management “hemmed and hawed,” she says.

On May 12, the Lotoses saw their possessions for the first time in nearly four months. When they realized the extent of their losses, Helen Lotos says, “We were devastated. After living in the same place for 24 years, we had nothing left but a few sticks of furniture.”

Helen Lotos calls it a “systematic looting.” No one knows when the items were taken. No one knows who took them. No inventory was done before their possessions were moved from their apartment into the vacant apartment.

I asked Helen Lotos if she was suspicious from the start. “I thought they must know what’s going on. I didn’t know anybody who’d had this happen, but it was their property, we were renters.”

Now, the Lotoses are suing the four parties involved: both private firms who did the asbestos work, the property management company and the parent Irvine Apartment Communities Inc.

Representatives of three of the four defendants didn’t want to discuss the suit. However, Denise Covington, general manager of Blake Services, adamantly disavowed responsibility on behalf of her company.

Covington acknowledges that Blake crews removed the asbestos from the apartment and handled the transfer of the Lotoses’ possessions to the storage apartment, but says, “We were 100% under the supervision of [Mission Geoscience]. We didn’t do anything unless it was approved by them. . . . At no time did we have access to the unit,” Covington says, referring to the second apartment used for storage. “[Mission] and the property management company were the only two that had access to the unit that stored the belongings. . . . In all reality, for them to name us in this suit is ridiculous.”

Still living in their original apartment, Helen Lotos has compiled stacks of papers and correspondences for the lawsuit. Her husband, she says, is gravely ill with the lymphoma.

Steven Bromberg, the lawyer handling the couple’s suit, says, “I can’t pass judgment as to who did this. Sure, break-ins occur all the time and I can’t stand up and say one of the defendants or their employees did it. What I do know, for whatever reasons they had, they failed to provide for security.”

Bromberg says he’s puzzled by various items that were in the room closest to the fire. Fabrics that presumably should have been discarded were not, he says. When the items were returned, the Lotoses had them tested by two independent labs and neither reported unusual amounts of asbestos, Bromberg says.

The Lotoses are asking for unspecified damages from the four firms. Even though only the Blake firm would discuss the case with me, Bromberg points out that they’re talking in other ways: Three of the firms--Blake, Mission Geoscience and Western National Properties--are suing each other, he says.

Helen Lotos still wonders whether they should have left home in the first place. She recalls a conversation with a friend whose house burned in the Laguna Beach fires in late 1993. “Boy, I was lucky,” she remembers her friend telling her. “I saw my stuff go up in smoke and it was over in an hour. It took you four months to find out your stuff was gone. I feel so sorry for you.”

Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.