What a difference a day made.
During 24 hours in the life of the Conejo Valley, a gunman murdered 12 people at the Borderline Bar & Grill. Some 13 hours later, the Hill Fire ignited and blazed across Highway 101. Minutes after that, the Woolsey Fire erupted. It would become a monster, claiming three lives and more than 1,500 structures as it stormed from the hills of Simi Valley to the sea.
For a time, 75 percent of Thousand Oaks was under mandatory evacuation. Vast clouds of smoke from the dual blazes darkened the skies. The wind raged random and relentless.
Amid this trio of tragedies, I found myself asking why this community? How much more can residents bear? And this Thanksgiving, what form will our gratitude take when so many are despairing?
ForThe Husby and me the answer to the last question comes easy. While surrounded by fires, the wind blew lucky for us.
But beyondthat, I am grateful for what I witnessed in every corner of our community. It showed me what rips lives apart can pull us together.
***
One week after the shooting, Michelle Hardy stood silently before the 12 white crosses at the heart of the burgeoning Moorpark Road memorial to those who died in the Borderline.
The nurse-practitioner knew none of those killed; the fire burned to her back fence. Yet she helped organize an early Thanksgiving at her gym, Proactive Sports Performance, for anyone affected by the shooting or the fires. Along with food, volunteers offered crafts to occupy the kids if parents wished to talk to grief counselors.
“We are all grievingtogether,” she said.
A few feet away, a chaplain with the Billy Graham rapid-response ministry prayed with the mother of a victim.
One of the most frequent prayer requests they receive, said team leader Steve Ballinger, is for the shooter’s mother, Colleen Long.
“Her heart must be absolutely torn as any mother’s heart would be,” said Ballinger, a former Riverside firefighter.
After 13 years as a chaplain in disasters natural and manmade — including the San Bernardino terrorist attack — he offered this hope. “I am a firm believer God can bring beauty out of the ashes.”
***
And we need only lift our eyes to the hills to see where firefighters — time after time — performed near miracles in saving homes and businesses. All over town, I overheard neighbors share how they left their houses for what they believed would be the last time as embers showered down. Only to return to find them standing amid blackened landscaping.
During a quick dash into Target, I overheard a man talking on his cellphone. That’s normalcy for sure. Only this conversation was different. He went into Ameci Pizza in Newbury Park to buy lunch for first responders. When the owner heard what he was up to, he donated 22 pizzas. Through social media, I learned the gentleman I overheard was David Meyer of Thousand Oaks, who was in Target to replace a photo frame broken while he was evacuating.
Meyer said of his pizza delivery, “Santa has nothing on us.”
***
In a dorm lounge at California Lutheran University, students circled a pool table, not to blow off steam shooting a quick game of 8-ball, but to bag toiletries for fire victims sheltered on their campus. Brand-new grooming products donated by students covered every inch of the felt.
Volunteer baggerBryttneyAvella expressed gratitude for a bout with the flu. Otherwise the line-dance teacher and Cal Lutheran sophom*ore would have been at the Borderline the night of the tragedy.
Thankful her friends made it out alive, she is volunteering as a form of therapy. “I want to be one of the helpers,” she told me. “That’s how I am coping.”
Among the couple dozen volunteers was Theresa Taylor, clad in a Thousand Oaks Strong T-shirt. Taylor survived the Borderline shooting.
The senior from Santa Barbara heard the first shots above the music. She spotted the backlit figure of the shooter and ran with a friend to a rear exit.
After climbing a steep hill and getting impaled oncactus, she and others hid in a dumpster until rescue came.
Grateful to first responders for saving so many lives, she shared what the tragedy has taught her: “It’s the little things that matter in life.”
Things like delivering pizza, showing up at a memorial, giving a hug, offering a prayer may seem small in the face of the huge and terrible difference 24 hours brought on Nov. 7 and 8. But this Thanksgiving, I am most grateful for the difference made by so many people to let the healing start.
Email Colleen Cason atcasonpoint101@gmail.com.
