00:00This is some serious, serious business, man.
00:15And after this experience, now when I hear a fire truck coming down the street, I'm pulling
00:21over and I'm not annoyed because usually it's like, ah, I got to pull over quick.
00:26And then we go to our kitchen.
00:27You know, I like to eat.
00:30Capra good, he a good cook.
00:32The best.
00:35The Hearst fire has grown to over 500 acres since last night.
00:39So you guys went up?
00:40I mean, I was scared the day that everything happened.
00:42Wow.
00:43It was myself and one of the partners, but fortunately, he's not here.
00:46How was that?
00:48It was one event where we thought that something was going to happen
00:50and it just led to something way out of our hands.
00:56Like my hat's on, but it's off to you guys, man.
00:59I'm like, yeah, thank you guys.
01:17These guys are personal friends of mine.
01:19They're high school coaches here.
01:21This is actually Tony's crib that he grew up in right now.
01:24It's mom crib right there, but all of them have the unique stories about
01:28how they were devastated about that right there.
01:31But this was a predominantly African-American neighborhood.
01:34And just to see this is terrible, man.
01:36And you coming out says a lot about you, man.
01:39And so I like everybody introduced themselves and tell him what school you coach at.
01:44Not only was these fires big for our basketball program,
01:48which two of our players lost their homes,
01:50but I also have residential treatment centers for kids.
01:54So I have group homes for kids and we lost our girl's house.
01:56I'm a Pasadena resident.
01:58We had two players on our team that lost their homes.
02:01This is my parents' home, Haywood and Jean Brooks.
02:06So obviously it's impacted me in a direct way.
02:10At Pasadena High School, we have two players that lost their homes.
02:14Just like the rest of the coaches here, we've, you know,
02:17several people, family members have lost their homes.
02:19Players on the team have lost their homes.
02:22Families displaced, you know, out of town, out of the city.
02:25There was a lot of African-Americans that moved here
02:28because in other parts of Los Angeles County,
02:32if you were an African-American family or couple and you wanted to buy a house,
02:36you were redlined and you could not get a house in certain areas.
02:40Altadena was one of those first areas that opened up for African-Americans.
02:44And so I say all that because I want to put out a message to
02:49all Altadenans that are going through this tragedy.
02:52But I just want to encourage people to rebuild and to not leave Altadena.
02:57If you're the Los Angeles Dodgers or you're the Los Angeles Lakers
03:01and you have a means to help, if you're really from L.A., be about it.
03:05All right. Thanks, man. Appreciate y'all.
03:14We just want to do our little part and help with the
03:17gathering of the supplies and distribution of it.
03:20So this is just a beginning.
03:22We know it's a long haul and many, many members of ours,
03:26over 15,000 members have been affected by the fire.
03:29And obviously the community, you know,
03:32many, many people in the community and businesses have been affected.
03:35So anything little that we can do to contribute back is what we're trying to do.
03:40You know, when you say, you know,
03:42the credit union and you guys are doing your little part,
03:45I wanted to stop you there because I think that anybody doing anything for anyone in life,
03:50whether it was a fire or not,
03:52anybody doing anything for anyone in life can be considered little.
03:56Because if you're helping somebody,
03:58the person you're doing it for thinks that's huge.
04:01What you're doing here is amazing. That's why I'm here.
04:03Hi, nice to meet you.
04:06Take your time.
04:07So my name is Maricela Ramontes.
04:11I'm a member of the chamber.
04:13So I'm here to represent the Altadena chamber.
04:15I have Larry who's with me and a lot of chamber members that have also come here.
04:20But personally, we were affected.
04:22My home, you know, I never would have imagined
04:25this would happen to our community.
04:26Not in our wildest dreams.
04:28You can come.
04:30Not in our wildest dreams.
04:31We left on that day thinking we were going to come back.
04:35We have fires up here all the time.
04:37And we, I even told her, we're not taking anything.
04:41We left with pajamas and thinking we're going to come back the next day.
04:46And I didn't, I didn't take anything, anything at all.
04:50And there was no tomorrow.
04:51We came back to full destruction.
04:53Not only for our house, it's gone.
04:55Our business.
04:56So we're a complete standstill.
04:58And I know that we're not alone.
05:00I know that as Altadenas, we're strong and we're going to rebuild.
05:05I always told myself if my city was ever affected
05:08or any of the surrounding area cities,
05:14that as a parent and as a father, I would like dive in.
05:20So if just here, we're here today, right?
05:24As humans.
05:25If you see me somewhere, just know that I'm standing there.
05:30Like I'm standing here with y'all today.
05:32And I don't know where I'm going when I leave my house.
05:36I don't know what I'm doing.
05:37I just want to know that I'm going to affect somebody positively.
05:43Yeah.
05:43Oh, of course.
05:45I got hugs all day.
06:07So
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