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ALTADENA, Calif. () — Much like thousands of families who lost their homes in the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, Brian McShea and Stephanie Raynor of Altadena have been spending their time sifting through the rubble.
The couple had only moved into their home about a year ago. Then, on January 7, they were forced to evacuate.
“I’m taking Altadena Drive and heading out, and I see Eaton Canyon at 6:20 or 6:30, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God. There’s a fire,'” recalled McShea. “The next day I woke up from an email from our landlord saying the house is completely gone.”
Besides their pets, they lost everything.
“As soon as we walked up, it really hit us,” said Raynor.
For McShea, that included the engagement ring he had just purchased. He was planning to propose to Raynor soon, but the ring was in the back of his now-charred desk drawer.
“I was thinking, ‘Well, maybe the stone can survive and maybe we’ll find the little stone.’ I thought the ring was going to completely disintegrate,” said McShea.
When they were digging through the rubble, he made it a point to look through one specific area.
“I was like, ‘We’re going to look over here where my desk is,'” said McShea. “I did not tell her why. I don’t know what [she] thought we were looking for because it was pretty obvious that a lot of my stuff was gone. So we’re digging around where my desk is … again, just looking for a stone man. I really didn’t have a lot of hope, but you just brush away some rubble and there’s a little ring, and you pick that up and it’s actually a washer to something, and that happened like four times, and then you pick it up, and there’s a little diamond. I was on my knees and I was like, ‘Hey, will you marry me.'”
“And I was crying,” said Raynor.
The couple hasn’t quite set a wedding date yet but they do know they want to stay in Altadena.
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