It started with a tree.
Day laborers at the Pasadena Community Job Center on Lake Avenue saw a tree felled by the Eaton Fire. The Eaton Fire was still blazing and the cities of Pasadena and Altadena had yet to fully realize the scope of devastation the flames had wrought.
The workers grabbed shovels and saws and cleaned up the area around the tree.
“They saw a need, and there was that sense of giving back to the community,” said Ishell Linares, development director for NDLON, or the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. “All our efforts since Jan. 7 has been fire response and cleaning up the city.”
In two weeks, that original crew has grown to 15-man groups traveling in 12 trucks around the two cities from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. They clean debris and mostly tree branches and green waste. Their headquarters at the job center has turned into a distribution site helping wildfire victims. A drive-through supplies pickup offers bottled water, clothes, diapers, bags of fresh fruit, pre-packaged Ziploc bags of chips, granola bars and fruit snacks.
At its peak, about 1,000 volunteers arrived at the center, ready to work.
Nadia Marin-Molina, co-executive director of NDLON, arrived from New York on Jan. 15. Marin-Molina created the group’s disaster response initiative, training thousands of day laborers after Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Eastern Seaboard in 2012.
“We’re getting every kind of support and so much positive energy,” she said, as orange-clad staff and volunteers worked around her. “The group here has a slogan, ‘Solidarity, not charity,’ and you see it when a first-time volunteer sees their small contribution is helping so many people and when people get help. We’re a center for everyone.”
Boston born and raised, Marin-Molina was the first in her Columbian family to graduate from college. Her mother cleaned houses and her father worked various jobs. A lawyer by trade, her mission includes fighting for workers, occupational health and safety and immigrants’ rights.
Workers in construction, landscaping, painting, cleaning, restaurants have been affected by the wildfires even if they haven’t lost their homes.
“These are the workers who, regardless of what’s going on, they’re getting up every morning to work or going to find jobs,” Marin-Molina said. “They are the ones doing the back-breaking work in the country and with their labor are sustaining industries across America. L.A. is not going to be rebuilt without immigrant workers.”
Many of NDLON’s clients lost jobs when businesses or the homes of their employers burned in both fires.
The job center has been an organizing hub since COVID-19, and its return to a wider service now is reconnecting it to an even bigger community. Volunteers from out of state and all walks of life are still arriving.
“It’s been an amazing effort,” Linares said.
Around the center’s periphery, other helpers are also doing work.
Next door, Baja Cali employees and volunteers distribute takeout containers of chicken burritos and fish tacos, rice and beans, oranges and water to anyone who drives up. They run meals to the drivers waiting in the drive-thru pickup.
Jaime Alvarez, who owns two Baja Cali locations in Pasadena, is working with World Central Kitchen to keep his employees working and feed first responders and wildfire victims.
Since the fires, Norma Alvarez has gone beyond her job description in human resources to help man operations at the Baja Cali on Lake Avenue.
“We’ve served 950 meals the last two days and we keep going,” she said. “We’re on for this challenge, to help this community that has been here for us all these years.”
They allow United Sikhs, a non-governmental organization (NGO), to set up a station on their lot. From there, Moninder Singh, senior program manager for the NGO, and a group of volunteers, offer people boxes of food (kidney beans and rice) with madeleine cookies and hot chai tea.
United Sikhs was founded in 1999, with a concentration of members in Covina, Sierra Madre, Altadena, Walnut and Riverside. Most are Punjabi business owners, committed to giving back to community, a pillar in the Sikh culture.
“The helping will not stop, come what may,” Singh said. “We have no control over these calamities, what we can do is put resilience in and give solace to those affected. We see God in everyone, and we say, ‘Come be a link in the circle.’”
Richard Duran of Long Beach is a missionary with the Missionary Church of the Disciples of Jesus Christ, which has bases in Covina, Bell Gardens and Signal Hill. Duran said he’s spent the last two weeks “doing a little bit of everything in the name of the Lord,” from helping clear debris with the fire brigade to signing people in and hauling water.
This day, he was in his church’s full white uniform, directing traffic.
“I try to give them words of comfort and tell them to trust in God,” Duran said.
At another corner, volunteers in red shirts are working in the name of OBR, which stands for Operation Barbecue Relief.
The nonprofit started in 2011 in Joplin, Mo., when a wife of a barbecue-loving man suggested he put his culinary skills to work after a hurricane. The group responds to weather disasters, from wildfires in Texas to flooding and hurricanes all across the South.
Emlyn Thomas, area coordinator, kept busy on his phone, arranging pickups, checking on the group’s Malibu home base and Hollywood kitchen. This day, they are serving barbecued pork loin with bread and corn.
“We fire up the smoker and it smells good and it looks good, and there’s a sense of ‘It’s going to get better,’” Thomas said. “This may be one of the worse days of their life, but they get a hot meal, and if we can see a smile on their face, we know we’re doing something.”
OBR has worked with award-winning pit masters such as Guy Fieri, feeding everyone from victims and first responders.
“There’s a misconception that we’re just good ol’ boys with two first names, but we’re nurses and teachers and everyone in between,” Thomas said. “As long as they have a good heart, we can teach them how to do what we do.”
Marin-Molina said what she will remember most about her days in the aftermath of a searing fire will be seeing the brigades lining up at 8 a.m. outside the Pasadena sidewalk.
“Worker after with so much energy, ready to go. There’s so much bad rhetoric going around, it’s hard to hear that and know these workers and how hard they work. People say whatever that rhetoric is, it doesn’t matter. We’re getting things done here. Immigrant workers are getting things done here. That’s what moves all of us.”