What We Saved in the Fires

My Mom’s Emmy

Melissa Rivers: TV host and daughter of Joan Rivers

Living in Los Angeles, I have been through a number of evacuations. So once I made sure we had our passports and all of that kind of stuff, I grabbed a picture of my father. I grabbed a baby picture of my son, Cooper, and some photos of me with my mom. All of the other family photos are obviously gone forever. And I grabbed a drawing that my mother did, of Cooper and I sitting on the beach one day when we were on vacation. Just a silly little sketch.

And I grabbed her Emmy because she was so proud of it. And in her entire career, it’s hard to believe she only won one [in 1990 for The Joan Rivers Show]. It was after she had gotten back on her feet, after my dad had died in ’87. So I know how much that meant to her. I knew what it represented on an emotional level to her. She kept it in her office.

I’ve had it since she passed.

I also grabbed her watch. I grabbed my dad’s dress watch that I had given to my son when he turned 18 and a couple of other random things. I thought I had grabbed one particular bracelet, which wasn’t even a big deal but had a very significant meaning to me — but it turns out I didn’t grab it. I thought I’d stuck it in my pocket. That’s all she wrote.

All the Fabergé, which they had collected through the years, and my mother’s good jewelry were all in the safety deposit box — and the bank in the Palisades with the safety deposit box burned down. Supposedly all of that is fireproof and bomb-proof. I don’t know what happens. Does it heat up like a fucking microwave? I have no idea. So eventually we’ll be able to get in there. I just don’t know when. And the bank around it is completely gone. That’s all I know.

We lost all the art, and my parents had such an amazing collection, a lifetime of collecting. There was a Robert Rauschenberg. My mom became friends with him at some point later in life, and there was a Rauschenberg that he actually picked out for her as a gift. They had a minor significant collection. I can still tell you where all those pieces from my childhood were hanging on the walls of my childhood home. I can tell you where they were hanging in my mom’s New York apartment. I knew exactly what she’d added to the collection in the 30 years since my dad died. I can tell you, after she passed, where they were hanging in my last house. I can tell you where they were hanging in my new, and now gone, house.

When my mom moved us from L.A. to New York, I felt so displaced. I remember being at my mom’s apartment in New York when they uncrated the collection, and I started to cry — because to me that represented home. It had started when I was 10 years old. That’s when they bought their first piece. It wasn’t even fancy, but it was their first piece of actual art.

Vincent Price was one of my godparents. And every major milestone birthday, he would give me a little piece of art. It was a really nice collection. That, for me, is one of the losses that I’m really grappling with because of the significance of remembering each step of it from the time I was little.

The joke files — the ones made famous by the 2010 doc Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work — are safe. It is part of the archives at the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, New York. And thankfully, they’re putting together an exhibit on my mom, and literally a couple months ago was when they had picked up a lot of the stuff. A lot of our archival stuff had just been transferred from our house into storage. Now it’s all at the National Comedy Center.

As for my mother’s dresses, what we still have is in storage. I had some very personal things at my house, like her favorite travel sweater, stuff like that, but it’s stuff that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone but me. I had my dad’s bathrobe. I had my mom’s bathrobe. Luckily, a lot of it wasn’t in the house. But my own history of awards shows clothes are all gone, not that that even matters.

This is the third time I’ve gone to bed with my life one way and woken up with it completely upside down. I’m finding a lot of comfort in making sure other people are OK because it doesn’t allow me to focus on me. When you’re talking to someone who is going through something like this, read the room. I’m so not interested right now in hearing things like, “My clothes reek from smoke damage.” Trivial things like that. So read the room — that’s number one. ^{_{— AS TOLD TO SETH ABRAMOVITCH}}

The Horses of Will Rogers State Historic Park

Cha Cha Jago: Equine riding concessionaire at the park

Cha Cha Jago lost her house to the Palisades Fire. But she’s more focused, at least at the moment, on how the aftermath of that wildfire is affecting the horses, horse workers and horse riders of Jigsaw Farms, her equine riding company. In recent years it’s been the concessionaire contracted at Will Rogers State Historic Park, named after Hollywood’s most beloved onscreen cowboy. That property, including the main ranch house as well as the stables, has been wiped out by the 23,000-acre blaze, which has destroyed more than 1,200 structures through much of the Pacific Palisades and eastern Malibu. ^{_{— GARY BAUM}}

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Rock History: An Iconic Dress

Steve Martocci: Tech entrepreneur

Steve Martocci is a tech entrepreneur whose first startup, messaging app GroupMe, was sold to Microsoft. He went on to co-found Blade, the Uber of helicopters, and music sampling marketplace Splice, and is currently in beta on SuppCo, an online platform to navigate the complex market of supplements. He lost his home in the Palisades fire.

We just finished a two-year renovation of our house literally that week. My wife and I woke up on Tuesday and said to each other, “This is the beginning of rest of our lives.” And two hours later, the house was gone. 

I grabbed the one-of-ones, including a dress worn by Phish drummer Jon Fishman from 1998 to 2011 that I bought in an auction.

I started going to Phish concerts in 10th grade, and I’ve seen over 200 shows. Jam bands like the Grateful Dead and The Disco Biscuits are what has fueled my career — I built GroupMe as an app just to go to see concerts with my friends. 

So I’ve seen Fishman playing in this thing for around 100 shows. His original dress totally disintegrated, and this was one of the two dresses made to replace it. It’s got a little hole on the side with a patch on it from where his drumstick rubbed so many times. 

Lisa Simpson, the maker of the dress, reached out and was so happy to hear that it survived. It’s truly a prized possession. Something so iconic that was bigger than me. _{^{— AS TOLD TO SHIRLEY HALPERIN}}

My Grandfather’s Rolex 

Kevin Cooley: Fire photographer

I’ve been photographing wildfires. I’m not a full-time journalist — I’m actually more of an artist. My work is about the human relationship to the environment, and a lot of that has been focused on fire in the past 10 years or so. 

I was photographing the Palisades Fire when I got the call from my wife to come back to Altadena. I’ve been around wildfires a lot, and I would’ve thought I would’ve done a better job at evacuating myself. But your brain — it’s hard to think when your child is screaming. We had a fire safe and managed to get everything out of there. So I have all my hard drives. But I lost basically anything else related to my studio. All my negatives, all my personal things. I didn’t even have a toothbrush. 

The things I was able to save are pretty limited, but one of them is my grandfather’s gold Rolex. His house burned down in the 1964 Bel Air Fire. My grandfather was an attorney. He worked for one of the banks in Westwood. It was a devastating fire, but it was only like 500 homes as compared with [the thousands] in this fire. My mom went out the next day and rented another house. And they rebuilt. They stayed. 

Now this watch has this extra layer of symbolism to me. I had taken the strap off and I just put it back on yesterday because I don’t want to get separated from the watch. The safest place for it now is on my arm. It now has some extra special meaning to me. 

My wife is a teacher at Pasadena High School, and three-quarters of my son’s class lost their homes. I don’t know what school’s going to look like for them. And I don’t want to pull my son away from his community right now. My wife feels responsibilities to her students as well. But at the same time, I don’t know what we’re going to do. _{^{— AS TOLD TO SETH ABRAMOVITCH}}

A Very Special Christmas Album Signed by Keith Haring

Diana Baron: Music executive

Diana Baron is a longtime resident of Pacific Palisades. She spent much of her career representing music artists, first at A&M Records and then her own public relations firm. Her clients have included Shakira, Avicii and the estate of Michael Jackson.  

I’ve worked and lived in the Palisades for all these years, and it’s really hard to process that so much is gone. I have a lot — I had a lot — of really nice art; there were tons of platinum records in the closet; and on the wall, it was everybody from Shakira to Avicii to Barry White. I had beautiful vintage photographs of me and Barry. 

When I evacuated, I took my grandmother’s necklace that she brought from Italy and I grabbed my copy of the A Very Special Christmas album signed by Keith Haring [who did the cover art for the compilation album produced to raise money for the Special Olympics]. I worked on that project, and it was a connection with my past in a lot of ways. Also, when I was head of advertising for Warner Bros. Records — when I was like 21 — they made a fake Rolling Stone cover with my face on it. I grabbed that, too. Weird. 

I wish I had taken my grandmother’s beautiful bronze lamps from the 1920s, and I didn’t because I thought I’d be back the next day. I thought, “I’ll just come and get it tomorrow.” _{^{— AS TOLD TO SHIRLEY HALPERIN}}

This story appeared in the Jan. 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.