Mike Regan
The life we truly wear.
Sandi and I were walking through her neighborhood not long after I had come back — temporarily, before renovations began. The rebuilding hadn’t really started yet and the devastation was still fully in front of you. Unsettling. Some streets were intact, almost ordinary. Others were empty lots where houses used to be, or something worse — the kind of destruction that has no polite name for it. I was unsettled too, still absorbing all the upheaval, knowing what was happening but not fully processing it.
It was the ease of it that I remember — how naturally we fell into conversation with a couple walking their dog. That’s an Altadena thing, a trail thing. Strangers don’t stay strangers long when they’re walking the same ground. I noticed the man was wearing an Eaton Canyon Nature Center t-shirt. I asked about it. Within minutes I had his cell number. His name was Mike. Hers was Ann.
I didn’t know then what that chance meeting would become.
Sandi and I had been talking about doing a podcast — stories of survival and hope from the fire. It was her idea and she knew many people. I hardly knew anyone. I texted Mike to ask if he would tell his story. He said he didn’t think his story was very interesting, but we could talk about it.
When I finally spoke with him by phone, I expected a conversation. What I got was an hour that left me in tears more than once.
It wasn’t just the fire. It was what the canyon meant to them — the life he and Ann had built around it, trail by trail, year by year. They had come from the midwest, looking for a compatible place to live. Ann discovered Pasadena one day and was taken with the older homes, the brick buildings, the oak trees — so welcoming, so familiar. Eventually the perfect home found them, on Altadena Drive near the Midwick entrance to the canyon. Their friends all came from those walks. Their purpose, their community, their daily rhythm — all of it rooted in that specific place. The canyon wasn’t where they went. It was how they lived. Over 19 years as docents in Eaton Canyon.
And then January 7th.
The police came and told Mike he had maybe ten minutes to gather what he wanted from the house. Maybe ten minutes. He walked through his own rooms not knowing what to take. Picked something up, put it back down. Ann came home and did the same. All of it in minutes. He didn’t say it directly but I sensed he already knew — they were going to lose everything. He knew in a way I didn’t when I left my own home that night, certain I’d be back the next day. (BTW, the next day turned into 6 months or so.)
That difference — between knowing and not knowing — is its own particular grief.
The fire changed everything but could not take away what Mike knew to be true. He began working to rebuild the trails, to participate in what would come next for Eaton Canyon. His friendships were rooted in this place and so was his purpose. Both survived.
When I saw him on the first day of docent training, I felt the full circle of it. Our chance meeting that day had not been just talk. He had helped me find my way there. Standing in that room I could see the future — possibilities, options, something opening rather than closing.
He said it simply, the way true things are said:
“You know, coming home from a hard day and seeking the solace that brings. And when that’s gone — it’s devastating.”
I have heard many stories since the fire. Each one unique, each one heartfelt. I will be sharing some of them here, seen through my lens, rooted in this canyon we share. They are, all of them, variations on the same theme — what home means, what it costs to lose it, what it takes to return.
Home is everything. Mike said that. So did everyone else.
The life we truly wear.
There will be a part 2 with Mike Regan as a status update to life six months later. This is the link to the YouTube podcast with Mike Regan.