With Help From Friends--and Strangers

Not long ago, LaVonne Conley’s friends gave her a shower that netted her presents any newlywed would want: “his and hers” bathrobes, slippers, towels, kitchen appliances, flatware, silver candleholders and much more. Gifts to help build a new beginning.

Only Conley--married for more than 20 years--wasn’t a bride, and the shower wasn’t brought about by a happy occasion. Still, in a way, her family was starting over.

Conley’s home on Red Hill Avenue was one of 10 houses destroyed on Oct. 21 in a series of wind-fed fires that also damaged more than 20 other structures in the bucolic Lemon Heights neighborhood, an unincorporated area near Tustin.

More than a month later, as the victims continue to pick up the pieces of their lives--even as their homes remain charred skeletons--many said their transition would not be possible without the generosity of their friends and neighbors, as well as the kindness of strangers.

“The response has just been overwhelming,” said Conley, who with her husband, David, has been living in a rented house since the fires. “I can’t imagine how lonely it would have been without everyone’s kindness and help because you are homeless in an instant, really.

“There’s no protocol for when your house burns down. We can’t believe the people who have jumped in and helped and given.”

During those first few chaotic days, her neighbor took care of her two dogs. Later, her husband’s co-workers at a business office wrote them checks and bought them cookware. The congregation at her church took up a cash donation that Conley said “was very generous.”

Even now, gifts still come in.

Just last week, as Lorraine Fairbairn and her children stood in line at a movie theater, some people recognized them from television footage that had shown their house on Afton Lane being burned to ashes. When Fairbairn went to get popcorn, one woman followed her and insisted she accept $20.

“She had tears in her eyes, and she said ‘This is not much,’ ” recalled Fairbairn, principal of a Catholic school. “But it is. . . . It has been just unbelievable. There has been something daily since Oct. 21.”

Even before the smoke cleared, the Sisters of St. Joseph’s, a community organization headed by nuns, invited the Fairbairns to a guest house where Fairbairn, her husband and three children had stayed until they moved into a rented house Saturday. Grandparents of a friend of Fairbairn’s daughter wrote them a check for “hundreds of dollars.” Schools in the Catholic Diocese of Orange County have sent them gift certificates or money. Old neighbors who moved away years ago have dropped by with gift baskets. Her husband’s law school classmates from 20 years ago have mailed them checks.

In appreciation of the many people who have opened their hearts and wallets to them, Fairbairn and her children recently painted a banner and draped it on the chain-linked fence in front of their destroyed home. “Thank you for your love and support,” was emblazoned on the bright yellow sign.

The fire and the resulting damage were “unfortunate circumstances,” Fairbairn said, “and they’ve been a little hard to take in at times. But through all this there has been lots of positives. You’re taken aback by the goodness.”

For Faith Kim, such generosity reaffirms her staunch belief in the inherent goodness of human nature.

Her five-bedroom house on La Loma Road was one of the first in the neighborhood to burn down. Within hours, people from her churches in Alhambra and Garden Grove, where Kim is a minister, began arriving with bags of clothes and other personal essentials.

“The next morning, one family drove up with my most-needed lifeline--an electric rice cooker,” recalled Kim, who is living with her husband and daughter in an apartment in Brea. “Every day that I open my closet and my refrigerator, I am reminded of the love and care people have for us and how blessed we are. They have given us clothes, food, towels, sewing material, soap--everything down to the toothpaste.”

“I can’t tell you just how much people have given and given and given,” Kim said.

Just as words seem inadequate to describe how the support--big, small and monetary--has helped make their rebuilding easier, some of the fire victims said, value could not be placed on what they have learned about the spirit of giving.

The experience has made Kim more humble than ever. “Common sense and logic say I should be devastated, but I’m not,” she said. “The people care too much for me to be devastated.”

Fairbairn would like the opportunity to one day return the generosity.

“I hope I can remember this kindness when someone has an unfortunate thing that has happened to them,” said Fairbairn. “It’s bottomless--people’s helpfulness and thoughts.”