The L.A. fire victims: Who they were
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- One victim was remembered as “a man with a quick wit, a brilliant mind and a love for his family.”
- Another victim was known to mentor young men, passing on “old-timey family values” he had learned as a boy.
- An Altadena resident who perished was a grandmother and former actor affectionately known as “Momma D.”
Los Angeles awoke on the morning of Jan. 7 unaware that the city and the people within it were about to change forever.
The most destructive fires in the city’s history claimed thousands of homes and businesses and, as of Thursday, at least 27 lives.
Here are some of those lost in the Southern California fires of 2025.
Dalyce Curry, 95
Altadena
In her youth Dalyce Curry was part of Old Black Hollywood, an actor who appeared in films such as “The 10 Commandments,” “Lady Sings the Blues” and “The Blues Brothers,” a career that spanned decades.
In her later years, she was Momma D, a beloved grandmother.
“She was very active, you would not think she was 95,” granddaughter Loree Beamer-Wilkinson told ABC7 News.
Curry spent Jan. 7 in the hospital for health issues and returned to her home in Altadena exhausted at the end of a long day, her granddaughter and part-time caregiver Dalyce Kelley told ABC.
When Kelley awoke that night to an emergency alert, she rushed to Curry’s neighborhood. A police officer stopped her at a barricade and told her that her grandmother’s house was already gone.
“It was total devastation,” Kelley told ABC. “Everything was gone except her blue Cadillac.”
After five agonizing days, the coroner confirmed to the family on Jan. 12 that Curry died in the Eaton fire.
“She was full of vitality, elegance, and an unmatched zest for life,” her family wrote on a GoFundMe page. “Her presence graced our family gatherings, her wisdom guided us through challenges, and her laughter brought joy to every moment.”
Erliene Louise Kelley, 83
Altadena
Erliene Kelley and her late husband, Howard, bought their blue-gray, three-bedroom house on Altadena’s Tonia Avenue in the late 1960s.
They raised two kids there, watched their grandchildren and great-grandchildren grow, celebrated holidays, birthdays and anniversaries.
A retired pharmacist, Kelley filled her spotlessly clean home with family photos and knickknacks that gave the house a cozy, welcoming feel.
“She knew everybody in the city,” granddaughter Briana Navarro said. “If you go anywhere with her, she’s stopping about five times to speak to someone. She was really sweet.”
Briana Navarro confirmed the death of her 83-year-old grandmother, Erliene Kelley, whose fate was not known for days.
After Howard died, Navarro and her family moved in with her grandmother. The family was at home the night of Jan. 7 when Navarro looked through the kitchen window and saw smoke rising in the distance.
She and her husband packed and prepared to leave. The fire still seemed distant, and Kelley declined to evacuate with them.
At 1:22 a.m. the next day, her grandmother responded to a text from Navarro in which she had asked how things were going at the house. “In the living room looking out,” she wrote. “I’m going to take a picture.”
The picture never arrived. On Jan. 9, Navarro said, police informed the family that a body had been discovered in the rubble where the house once stood.
Evelyn McClendon, 59
Altadena
McClendon died in the Eaton fire, her brother, Zaire Calvin, told “60 Minutes.”
Calvin said they became separated while he was trying to get his wife, baby and mother to safety. McClendon lived next door, and their family found her remains in the rubble.
“Everybody’s yelling, ‘Get out,’” he recalled of the chaotic evacuation. “I’m thinking that she’s getting out. The next day after the storm, I come back and her car’s still there. So at that point ... my soul is shaking.”
Calvin spoke to the news outlet of the sense of communal grief after the fire.
“Everyone’s in the same boat. Like, everybody you would depend on, everybody you would go to, they’re all homeless also,” Calvin said. “They just lost everything. They’ve lost all their memories, all the joy.”
Randall Miod, 55
Malibu
On his Instagram page, Randy “Craw” Miod described himself as a “Malibu man of mystery.”
Following his death in the Palisades fire, friends recalled a fun-loving, joyful fixture on Malibu’s surf scene.
As a teenager growing up in Chatsworth, long-haired skater Miod “was like Jeff Spicoli from ‘Fast Times [at Ridgemont High],’ ” Miod’s friends wrote in a joint post on Instagram. “It was always fun with him.”
He moved to Malibu three decades ago and rented a studio attached to a century-old red barn-style house near the beach, his mother Carol A. Smith said. When the landlord later offered him the opportunity to buy the house, he eagerly went for it.
On social media, friends paid tribute to Miod and the many parties at “the Crab Shack,” as his home was locally known.
“The door was always open for surfers, people on their way from different countries, vagabonds traveling through that he felt a kindred spirit with,” his friend Todd Proctor recalled.
As the Palisades fire closed in on Jan. 7, Miod called his mother around 3 p.m. to say he could smell the smoke. He said he had a hose and was going to fight for his home.
“His last words to me that day were, ‘Pray for the Palisades and pray for Malibu. I love you,’” she said.
Miod’s remains were found there after the fire. He was holding his kitten, the Malibu Times reported.
“He’d been through so many of these fires and made it through unscathed. I think he thought he could do it again,” Smith told CNN. “Now that I’m realizing how many memories he had in that home, I can understand why he didn’t want to leave.”
Anthony Mitchell Sr. and Justin Mitchell
Altadena
Anthony Mitchell Sr., the beloved patriarch of a sprawling family, died with his son Justin Mitchell, the two huddled together in their Altadena home as the Eaton fire descended on them.
Anthony Sr., a man in his early 70s, was a father figure to many and a “surrogate dad” to a number of cousins, said his son Anthony Mitchell Jr. “He took [his job] seriously” as a dad, eldest brother and uncle.
To his sons and their friends, Anthony Jr. said, he was “one of those type of men, African American men in general, they’ll see a kid they don’t even know, and if they constantly see the same kid — they’ll give advice.” Anthony Jr. added that that his father lived for a time in the 1960s with his grandfather, inheriting “real old-timey family values.”
Anthony Mitchell Sr., an amputee who used a wheelchair, and his son Justin, who had cerebral palsy, died due to slow evacuation efforts during the Altadena fire, relatives said Friday.
Anthony Sr. gave nicknames to his nieces and nephews — Chocolate Red, Coco, Peanut Butter, Horchata. A nephew who kept stealing his father’s Payday candy bars over Christmas earned the nickname Payday.
“He told me his children, his great grandchildren — he saw them all as his legacies,” Anthony Jr. said.
Anthony Sr. lived in the home of his other son, Jordan, where they welcomed the whole family for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The father, who was an amputee and used a wheelchair, took care of his son Justin, who was born with cerebral palsy.
“They told my dad they thought he’d be lucky to make it to 12. So him making it to the 30s is a miracle,” Anthony Jr. said. “My dad loved my little brother, he would sit and talk to him. That was his boy.”
Justin “had the mind-set of a kid,” his brother said, and liked cartoons.
“He was sweet,” Anthony Jr. said of Justin.
Family members created a GoFundMe page to help raise funeral expenses.
Charles Mortimer, 84
Pacific Palisades
Mortimer died in a hospital having suffered a heart attack, smoke inhalation and burns, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.
His daughter, Meredith Mortimer, told CBS News that her father loved to travel and was “an avid sports fan.”
“He will be remembered as a man with a quick wit, a brilliant mind and a love for his family,” she said. “His infectious smile and never-ending sense of humor will be greatly missed by his friends and family all over the world.”
Rodney Kent Nickerson, 82
Altadena
Rodney Kent Nickerson purchased his beloved Altadena home in 1968 for a grand total of $5, his daughter Kimiko Nickerson told KCAL News.
He raised his children there, and then his grandchildren. He built a pool in the grassy backyard.
The family’s roots in Los Angeles ran deep. His grandfather William Nickerson Jr. founded the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co., for a time the largest Black-owned business west of the Mississippi River. Nickerson Gardens, the Watts public housing complex, is named after him.
But for Rodney, Altadena was home. He was a project engineer for 45 years at Lockheed Martin, where his late wife also worked. When Lockheed moved from Burbank to Palmdale in 1989, Nickerson chose to commute roughly 130 miles round trip each day rather than leave his neighborhood, his daughter told KCAL.
And when the Eaton fire broke out roughly three miles from his home, he was not about to leave then either, his daughter said.
As a grandson who lived with him frantically packed a car, Nickerson refused all entreaties to evacuate.
“If I need to go, I’ll go,” Kimiko Nickerson said he told her son. “But grandson, I don’t need to go right now.”
The family stayed in contact with him by phone as he went about his evening and settled into bed. When they were allowed back to the property, that’s where they found him.
“‘Everything will be cool,” he told his daughter the night of Jan. 7 in their final conversation. “I’ll be here when you guys come back.”
Annette Rossilli
Pacific Palisades
Annette Rossilli, who was in her mid-80s, died in her car outside her Pacific Palisades home Jan. 7 after declining to evacuate with neighbors and other caregivers.
Fay Vahdani, owner of Luxe Homecare, said that a staff member from her home healthcare company drove to Rossilli’s house that day when the fire started approaching, to evacuate her. Rossilli’s caregiver, who had the day off, also reached out to offer her own home as an escape. Rossilli’s two neighbors also contacted her. Vahdani said Rossilli declined help from all of them, saying she wanted to stay with her pets — two parrots, a canary, a turtle and a dog.
“We could’ve easily taken them with us,” Vahdani said. “The problem is you can never force anyone to do anything. It was her choice.”
Rossilli lived alone in the house she had once shared with her late husband. They had run a plumbing business together. She is survived by a daughter and a son, who both live out of state, Vahdani said.
Vahdani last saw Rossilli on Dec. 23, when she brought holiday gifts of fresh-baked cookies and other goodies to all of her clients.
“She was such a sweet little lady, very pleasant, full of life,” Vahdani said.
She added that Rossilli had a difficult time walking. “She must’ve [had] such a bad frustration that she was able to manage, come down the stairs and get to the car, but she couldn’t drive away.”
Victor Shaw, 66
Altadena
Victor Shaw, a former courier driver, died outside his longtime family home, a garden hose in his hand.
His younger sister Shari Shaw said Victor, who had diabetes and chronic kidney disease, had been dealing with some breathing issues as well as balance and vision problems.
When she went to check on him Jan. 7 in the modest Altadena home their parents bought on Monterosa Drive in the 1960s, she found him growing agitated while watching local TV news coverage of the fires. He took seizure medication to calm himself down, she said, and started to fall asleep as she packed up some of his belongings.
Around 2 a.m. the next day, when she went outside to load her SUV, she saw orange flames and thick smoke billowing toward their family home.
“Victor, we have to get out!” she screamed. She tried multiple times to get him to go, to no avail. If she didn’t get out of there, she figured, they both would end up dying. She hopped into her SUV.
All through the night, her calls to his cellphone went to voicemail.
When Shari Shaw finally returned to the neighborhood, the modest bungalow that had been in their family for more than half a century was gone.
Her brother’s body was on the walkway outside the front door.
“He might have felt like he was trying to do the right thing and attempting to put out the flames,” she said. “I don’t know if he truly believed he could, but I know he tried.”
With the Eaton fire bearing down on a Altadena home, a brother and sister had to decide what to do. One left the scene. The other stayed behind. What happened next was a family tragedy.
Victor loved to drive the highway to different U.S. cities and was fascinated with Route 66. Over the last few years, they took little weekend trips together to Reno, Lake Tahoe, San Diego and Palm Springs.
“You know, when you’re younger, you don’t really appreciate your sibling,” Shari said. “As we got older, our relationship developed. ... He was a good guy.”
Family members created a GoFundMe page to help raise money for burial expenses for Shaw.
Mark Shterenberg, 80
Pacific Palisades
Mark Shterenberg emigrated with his wife, Marina, and young daughter in 1980, an engineer determined to provide his family a life unhindered by the antisemitism he saw in Russia.
“He was so smart, and so dedicated, and had such an amazing work ethic,” said his granddaughter Tatiana Bedi, 29, of San Francisco. “I don’t think he ever took a day of vacation. He got up every day and went to work building a life for his family.”
Shterenberg worked as an engineer for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Hughes Aerospace Corp., his family said.
In 1993, he and Marina purchased their home in Pacific Palisades. A former wrestler, Shterenberg remained fit and strong well into his later years, still hauling himself up to his roof to make repairs despite his family’s protests.
On the outside, he could seem gruff and bristly, Bedi said, “but on the inside, he was just the mushiest, most loving person. He loved his wife — my grandma — and my mom and my brother and I so much.”
When the Palisades fire broke out Jan. 7, Shterenberg was at home while his wife was at their daughter’s house, recuperating from a recent illness. Frantic calls and texts asking him to evacuate went unanswered.
On Jan. 11, they were notified that investigators found human remains in the rubble of his home, along with Shterenberg’s glasses, Bedi said.
“We don’t really know why he didn’t choose to evacuate,” Bedi said. “We’ll never really have answers about that. But in my heart, I feel like he was trying to protect everything that he built for his family here.”
Arthur Simoneau, 69
Topanga
Arthur Simoneau’s friends and neighbors always knew how to find the 69-year-old Topanga resident: just follow the trail of invasive weeds he yanked from the ground on his walks.
Those friends also said he represented the best of Topanga, a tight-knit bohemian mountain community with a reputation for welcoming the free-spirited.
He was soft-spoken and quirky, his long silver hair kept in a ponytail. A passionate hang-glider, he was an early pioneer in the sport who continued to fly every weekend that he could. He made one concession to age as the years went past: He started wearing sandals instead of flying barefoot.
As his neighbors fled the Palisades fire, Simoneau ran toward it in an attempt to save his home. He was found in the doorway of his house on Swenson Drive. Simoneau’s son Andre wrote on a GoFundMe page that he always knew his father — who he said rode motorcycles at “Social Security” age with a helmet that said “for novelty use only” — “wouldn’t die of old age or illness.”
“It was always in the back of our heads that he would die in spectacular Arthur fashion,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, he died in the Palisades fire protecting his house [and] doing what he did best: being a badass and doing something only he was brave enough (or crazy enough) to do.”
Rory Sykes, 32
Malibu
The rosy-cheeked, flame-haired 10-year-old paused and gave a giggle of frustration. He was on an Australian morning talk show, about to travel to the United States for a 2003 speaking engagement, and his nerves were getting the best of him.
“It’s nerve-racking isn’t it, on television,” his mother, Shelley Sykes, said gently from the chair next to him. “Tell them: It’s not what happens to you in life ...”
“It’s what you do with it that counts,” he finished with a smile.
Born blind and with a diagnosis of cerebral palsy, Sykes did a lot with his 32 years: child actor and model, host of the British TV show “Kiddy Kapers,” a foodie who joked that he could have had a promising career as a competitive eater.
He was a frequent motivational speaker, recounting how he gained both sight and the ability to walk after at least a dozen surgeries and decades of physical therapy.
After leaving school at 15, he turned a passion for technology and gaming into a career as a digital marketing consultant. He was a co-founder of Happy Charity, a nonprofit supporting disadvantaged teens and families, and an avid player of the fantasy game RuneScape.
“He was a really kind and caring person,” said Jane Manchun Wong, a San Francisco-based blogger and software engineer who first connected with Skyes through Twitter about five years ago.
Sykes died in his cottage on his family’s Malibu property Jan. 8, his mother Shelley said in a post on X.
Kim Winiecki, 77
Altadena
Jeannette McMahon told the Pasadena Star-News she dropped off Winiecki on Monday night after they went out to dinner. The next night the Eaton fire broke out, and she texted her friend asking if she needed to be picked up.
Winiecki texted back saying she would be fine. It was the last time McMahon heard from her.
McMahon later reported her friend missing.
Winiecki’s brother, Mark, said they were told by the medical examiner’s office that Winiecki died in the fire that engulfed her home.
“It’s sad. She was at the house. She didn’t get out,” he said. “We love her, and we will miss her wit and her humor.”
Zhi Feng Zhao, 84
Altadena
Zhi Feng Zhao grew up in poverty, having been orphaned as a child in China. With his own son he was caring and thoughtful, dispensing advice and comfort when challenges arose.
He was a “smart and talented” person, his son Shaw Zhao told the AP. He earned a college degree in math and mechanical engineering, and switched to the restaurant business after immigrating to the U.S.
Shaw Zhao bought his parents the ranch-style home in Altadena in 2003, the AP reported. His father loved the area, hiking its trails frequently and sharing their avocado tree’s fruits with neighbors.
“He just loved the peace, the fresh air above Altadena,” his son recalled.
Zhao’s wife, a teacher, died of cancer in 2021. His caregiver was out of town when the fire began. His worried son flew down from Portland and began searching the neighborhood on foot for signs of his father. He found his remains where his home once stood.
This article was written by Times staff writers Jenny Jarvie, Faith E. Pinho, Corinne Purtill, Summer Lin, Sonja Sharp and Ruben Vives. It will be updated as more fire victims are identified.
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