LOS ANGELES — Shaw Zhao was worried even before he arrived in Los Angeles last week: His father’s neighborhood was in an evacuation zone as deadly wildfires raged in the metropolitan area, and Zhao hadn’t heard from the 84-year-old the previous night.
As he made his way from the airport to Zhi-feng Zhao’s home in the Altadena neighborhood on Jan. 8, he was stopped by police blockades. So he went to a shelter for evacuees, searching every bed for his father’s familiar face to no avail.
The next day, he got into the neighborhood on foot, walking for an hour with his Lyft driver and the man’s wife — two strangers who had agreed to help him.
Approaching his father’s home, the houses along the entire block were all but gone. A coyote sniffed around the debris where his father’s home once stood. When he went to inspect, he was horrified to find his father’s remains.
“It was very difficult,” Zhao said, crying.
Zhi-feng Zhao, who was among at least 25 people killed in one of the most destructive natural disasters in Southern California’s history, had come to the United States from China in 1989, his son said, speaking partially in Mandarin.
His father, who was orphaned as a child and grew up in poverty in China, earned a college degree in math and mechanical engineering. After he immigrated to the U.S., he was unable to continue his academic work in his field because of the language barrier and instead worked in the restaurant business, his son said.
Shaw Zhao said he bought the Altadena home for his parents in 2003. His mother, a local Chinese schoolteacher, died from cancer in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic when she was afraid to go to the hospital because she didn’t want to be isolated from her family.
Both his parents loved the neighborhood near Pasadena. The ranch-style home had a tree in the yard that produced a bounty of avocados for them and their neighbors every year.
“He just loved the peace, the fresh air above Altadena,” Zhao said of his father, noting that he was an avid hiker, active and strong until his wife passed away. He’d since required the help of a caregiver, who was out of town when the fires started.
Numerous older photos of his parents, his mom’s extensive stamp collection and sweaters she knit for him before she was diagnosed with cancer were also lost in the fire.
His dad had told him, “Shaw, Mom will leave you. But you will always have something to warm your body.”
Shaw Zhao plans to take both parents’ ashes to China, where they have side-by-side burial plots in Shanghai. He also plans to rebuild the home, even though he lives in Portland, Oregon.
Zhao said he was close to his father, a “smart and talented” man who often gave him advice on how to speak up for himself and handle challenges when he was growing up.
Whenever he visited Los Angeles, his parents would prepare fish and his other favorite dishes. Even when his father couldn’t cook anymore, he’d instruct his caregiver to make food or order authentic Shanghainese food from Alhambra, an LA area with a large Chinese population.
In his last conversation with his dad — the day before he flew to Los Angeles — his father carried on that form of love: “When will you be here at home? What do you want to eat?”