After the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, Brian McShea and Stephanie Raynor from Altadena found themselves among the thousands of families sorting through the remains of their home.
The couple had only moved into their home about a year ago. Then, on January 7, they were forced to evacuate.
McShea vividly remembers the moment he first realized something was wrong. “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,'” he recalled. The following day, he received an email from their landlord confirming the loss of their home.
Besides their pets, they lost everything.
“As soon as we walked up, it really hit us,” said Raynor.
Among their losses was the engagement ring that McShea had recently bought. He had intended to propose to Raynor, but unfortunately, the ring was now buried in the ashes at the back of his scorched 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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