As thick smoke and scorching flames from the catastrophic Eaton fire closed in, 66-year-old Victor Shaw made a brave, last-ditch effort to save his family’s beloved Altadena home.
A cousin, Benita Shaw-Malone, said Victor lived alone and was limited by poor eyesight and other physical disabilities. She described him as “a gentle soul.”
Shari Shaw, his younger sister and only sibling, lives nearby in Altadena and visited Victor every day to cook for him and make sure he took his medications.
On the evening of Jan. 7, after the Eaton fire broke out and mandatory evacuations were ordered, Shari raced from her residence to Victor’s home to help him escape. “I got to get to the house,” she told Shaw-Malone in a frantic phone call as she drove.
But after arriving at the home, Shari, 61, was unable to awaken Victor, who had taken some medicine and was sound asleep, said Shaw-Malone, a 71-year-old retired high school teacher from Northern California who now lives in Long Beach.
As hot embers buffeted by high winds rained down on the roof of the house, Shari fled to search for someone who could help to rescue her brother, Shaw-Malone said. But she couldn’t find any firefighters and the only sheriff’s deputy she encountered told her to get out of the area for her own safety.
The next day, just hours after the deadly fire ripped through western Altadena, leaving it looking like an apocalyptic war zone, Shari returned to the neighborhood.
After begging emergency personnel for permission to enter the area, she and a friend passed numerous burned-out homes as they cautiously made their way to Victor’s large house in the 3000 block of Monterosa Drive.
It was there among the smoldering rubble that Shari discovered Victor’s charred remains. He was clutching a garden hose.
Victor’s efforts to save the house aren’t surprising, Shaw-Malone said. “He loved that home,” she said. “It had been in our family for decades.”
Victor, who worked as a courier, will be remembered for his quiet, gentle and unassuming personality and love for shopping and sports, especially football and basketball, Shaw-Malone said.
His death from smoke inhalation and thermal injuries has devastated his sister, who has been staying with a friend in Pasadena and was finally allowed to return to her own home on Monday, Jan. 20.
As they struggle both with Victor’s death and Shari’s trauma from trying to rescue him, Shaw-Malone said family members have been on “auto-pilot” as they make plans for a memorial service and scrape to pay for a funeral. Noting that many family heirlooms were destroyed in the fire, she said, “I can’t express the pain my family is going through.”
A GoFundMe account has been established to help cover Victor’s burial costs.