Some Altadena residents are searching for any remnants of what might have been left behind as they begin to return to the burned-out remains of the neighborhoods that once made up their community.
On Friday afternoon, Mark Rodriguez, one of those locals, was one of several who saw the remains of their houses on Mariposa Drive. When he fled the Eaton Fire, he left behind his wedding rings, which he hoped to locate.
“I’m hoping we might find our wedding bands by chance. Thinking we’d return, I left them hanging and didn’t take them,” Rodriguez remarked.
He claims that his wife, Yvonne, passed away in the home they shared for many years in 2018.
Rodriguez and KCAL News reporter Joy Benedict discovered the remnants of the urn containing his late wife’s ashes while sorting through the rubble left by the terrible fire.
The ship had shattered into several pieces as their house caught fire, one of hundreds in Altadena that had been totally destroyed in recent days.
“They’re just gonna bulldoze it and she’ll just go back to the earth,” Rodriguez stated. In fact, she would adore it…. Isn’t that hilarious, God? Ash to ashes, I suppose, is what everyone does. She would like to be amid the ashes right now.
Rodriguez decided to leave the urn and ashes where he believed they belonged, with the memories they shared for so many years, rather than collecting what fragments of the urn he could.
Rodriguez says he has every intention of rebuilding a house in the same location, but for now he is staying with relatives in another part of Southern California.