‘Little Pixies’ Together in Life and in Death

The three dark-haired little girls were known around La Conchita for linking hands as they walked to buy ice cream at the town’s only store. They were together again Monday when the hillside above them collapsed.

Firefighters who found the Wallet sisters before dawn Wednesday said it looked as if they had been sitting side by side on a couch.

The bodies of Hannah, 10, Raven, 6, and Paloma, 2, were pulled from the rubble just hours after their mother, Mechelle, 37, was found dead. Their father, Jimmie Wallet, last saw them when he left to buy ice cream, not long before the cliff gave way without warning.

In addition to the Wallets, La Conchita residents learned that three more neighbors had been killed: Christina Kennedy, 61, a construction worker and single mother; Patrick Rodreick, 48, a longtime resident and handyman; and Vanessa Bryson, 28, a singer known for a great voice and her dream of making it in the music business.

Bryson lived next door to Charlie Womack’s house, where the Wallets went in hard times. Womack had moved into the tepee in front of the house to give his room to the Wallets. He died of blunt trauma in the landslide.

The Womack compound had served as a community center. Friend and neighbor Scott Maben called it “the soup kitchen” because everyone was welcome.

“That house to me was the essence of La Conchita,” said Vera Long, whose home was spared when the landslide stopped 20 feet short. “The kids were always playing outside, running around. Jimmie would carry his guitar and they would follow him around.”

A crayon drawing by one of the girls that read “I love you Charlie” decorated the fridge.

“They just glowed like little pixies running around La Conchita,” said Nicole Hart, 23, who grew up in town.

Jimmie Wallet dug alongside searchers for days through the deep mud burying the house. As they worked to find Wallet’s family, Maben said, he pictured his friend’s daughters “all in a little air bubble.”

When news of their deaths spread Wednesday, friends remembered the girls for their distinct personalities.

“Hannah was kind of quiet, kind of artsy,” said Maben’s girlfriend, Whitney Bohlen, 19. “She liked to draw and keep to herself. But she had just started to come out of that withdrawn stage.”

Raven, she said, was energetic and beautiful. “She never had a dull moment ever. She would just run around shouting, ‘I love you all!’ ”

About Paloma, she said, “She was very funny and wise for her 2-year-old self.”

Not long ago, Bohlen said, Paloma pointed at Maben’s somewhat thick middle and said, “You have a fat belly.”

Bohlen, who is five months pregnant, was so close to Mechelle Wallet, she called her “Mom.” She said she turned to the stay-at-home mother for advice, consulting with her on midwives and childbirth.

“She was the strongest, most beautiful woman, just so Mother Earth, so in touch with life,” Bohlen said. An older daughter, Jasmine, 16, was not living with them at the time of the mudslide, she said. The Wallets, Bohlen said, were high school sweethearts who had grown up in Ventura.

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Christina Kennedy

In the small town where everyone knew each other, many victims were closely tied. With her training in construction, Christina Kennedy pitched in at Womack’s house, where they were constantly adding rooms to accommodate more visitors and then taking them down when county officials came by and said they didn’t meet code.

The onetime welder lived on Zelzah Avenue, across the alley from Womack. Part of a family that had lived in town for generations, Kennedy was remembered as a devoted mother to her teenage son, Chase. “I’ve grown up with that kid, and he’s always had just his mom. And that’s it,” said Hart, who said she was worried about Chase. His mother, she said, was spirited and strong-willed. “She was always there to help,” Hart said. “She was always around the corner. If your car broke down, she’d be there and push-start it for you.”

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Vanessa Bryson

Vanessa Bryson had a singing voice that reminded locals of Nelly Furtado or Natalie Merchant. Around her house she kept figures of Buddha and was interested in Asian style and religion. To keep in shape, she did tai chi and Pilates and drove each day to a gym in Carpinteria.

Hart, who lived in the same house with her for about a year, said Bryson and her boyfriend, Dan Powell, were from Cape May, N.J. Friends said Bryson dreamed of making it in the music business, but knew it was a longshot.

As the mudslide hit the town, Maben said, he watched on television as Powell ran out of the house he shared with Vanessa, screaming: “She’s still in there!”

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Pat Rodreick

As friendly as many neighbors were, it was hard to get to know Pat Rodreick.

“He kept to himself, lived at the other end of town,” said Hart, who often saw him riding his bicycle in La Conchita.

Annelle Beebe said that when she moved to La Conchita 24 years ago, Rodreick was there. Ruth Dean, 80, said that her son, Jimmy Dean, used to be friends with Rodreick in the 1980s, when the two would go shooting in the hills together. By the mid-1990s, though, the occasional handyman and landscaper had clashed with some neighbors. Some men in town had built a deck on the beach that had stairs that went right down to the sand. Neighbors widely suspected Rodreick of reporting the un-permitted structure to the authorities.

In 1996 he told The Times that he considered the deck where barbecues regularly were held to be “a doggy door” that made it easy for the town’s dogs to attack birds on the beach.

After months of fighting, the deck was torn down by Caltrans -- but only after residents who prided themselves on doing things their own way threw one last party.*

Times staff writers Carla Hall and Amanda Covarrubias contributed to this report.