Fire destroyed livelihoods of gardeners, nannies, housekeepers in hours

Carol Mayorga and Manfredo Salazar spent more time in Pacific Palisades than they did their own South Los Angeles neighborhood.

It was their bank account. It paid their mortgage. It was the place where their 13-year-old son had long attended school, and where — after their decades of working there — employers became as close as family.

So when Pacific Palisades burned, Mayorga and Salazar’s livelihood went up in flames too.

Their own three-bedroom home still stands, but nearly 10 properties where Mayorga and Salazar worked as housekeepers are gone. The condo building where Salazar worked in maintenance, cleaning the hallways and public spaces, is still standing, but it’s inaccessible. The two-day-a-week job their daughter, Yoselin Salazar, had as an assistant is over. And the high school where Bryan Salazar dreamed of playing football has been heavily damaged.

Thousands of homes and businesses were destroyed in the fires that ravaged Los Angeles County in the last week. They provided jobs to an untold number of nannies, gardeners, housekeepers, plumbers, pool cleaners and other service workers, many of whom are grieving alongside their employers for all that was lost.

Barbara Bruderlin, chief executive officer with the Malibu-Pacific Palisades Chamber of Commerce, said it’s too soon to know just how much of an effect the fires have had on the region’s workforce, but “there’s a lot of sectors of people that don’t have jobs now.”

Tanya Lopez Brooks, a founding board member of One Voice, estimates that thousands of workers could be affected by the fires, some of whom may be ineligible for government assistance due to their legal status. Her organization, a local nonprofit, has launched a fund specifically to aid service workers.

People such as the family whose members lost their housekeeping jobs in the Palisades fire and whose apartment in Altadena burned in the Eaton fire. And the gardener who worked in the Palisades for 30 years and employed his family members; all are now without jobs.

“They are as much the fabric of the communities that anybody else is,” Lopez Brooks said.

The fires have left Mayorga with a painful mix of anxiety, depression and exhaustion. She’s worried for her family and for the families that helped her build a life here, so far from her native Guatemala.

“They lost their homes,” Mayorga said, “and we lost our income.”

Escape from Pacific Palisades

Mayorga and Salazar were hard at work cleaning a stately home on McKendree Avenue — valued by Zillow at close to $7.5 million — when flames began attacking the seaside neighborhood on Jan. 7.

That morning, like most mornings, the couple and their son had left home about 6:30 a.m. They dropped Bryan off at Paul Revere Charter Middle School about 7:45 a.m., before heading to the house where they worked once a week, teaming up to scour its more than 6,000 square feet in five hours.

But less than three hours into the job, Mayorga’s boss asked whether she’d seen what was unfolding outside. When the couple looked, they spotted houses burning in the mountains. Smoke choking the air.

A home destroyed in the Pacific Palisades fire on Jan. 11, 2025.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

“If I were you, I would leave,” Mayorga’s employer said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Mayorga began calling her other employers around Pacific Palisades to warn them of the fire threat. Soon, a mandatory evacuation order came down. By 11:30 a.m., Mayorga had heard that three of the houses where she worked had burned down.

Three miles east of where Mayorga and Salazar were working, their son prepared to evacuate from his school. The fire was blazing over a nearby hill. They picked their son up, went home and packed their bags, in case they had to evacuate too.

The couple spent a sleepless night wondering what would be left of Pacific Palisades, their home away from home where they normally worked seven days a week.

They cried as they watched videos of the homes of longtime employers burn.

“Practically our whole lives were there,” Mayorga said of Pacific Palisades. “We only came home to sleep.”

A newspaper ad

Mayorga, Salazar and their young daughter, Yoselin, left the Guatemalan town of Barberena in the early 2000s and headed for Southern California. Their first home was a cramped garage in South L.A. Mayorga found work caring for the children of a Salvadoran family, but when they could no longer keep her on, they suggested she look for work in a place a world away from her own: Pacific Palisades.

For four days a week, three hours a night, Mayorga attended English classes so she could better converse with future employers.

She took out an ad in the Palisadian-Post: Housekeeper available any day of the week. Speaks English and can drive.

She was 23 when she landed her first job, with a Palisades homeowner who grew so confident in Mayorga that she recommended her to other residents. Salazar eventually was hired alongside her, and the two became a housekeeping team. During summers, Yoselin tagged along, befriending the children of her parents’ employers as the couple worked.

“I feel like I grew up there,” Yoselin Salazar, 27, said of the tony coastal suburb. Her younger brother felt the same.

As the years passed, Mayorga and her husband watched the fortunes of both the neighborhood and their employers change. Homes went from 2,000 square feet to nearly 10,000. Small homes morphed into three-story mansions.

Andres Salazar, 39, removes dry leaves from the walkway of an apartment complex on Jan. 13, 2025, in Santa Monica. Salazar is now trying to find more work after L.A. County wildfires destroyed neighborhoods, and with them, the jobs of many landscapers such as himself who make the trek to the wealthy enclaves of West Los Angeles and Pacific Palisades.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Mayorga’s second job in the area was with the Ferriers, who had just purchased their first home. Their daughter Charlotte was only 18 months old. The housekeeper watched as the young couple began investing in houses around the area, renting them out and relying on the proceeds as their main source of income.

Mayorga’s family thrived alongside the Ferriers, who moved into a larger home and employed Mayorga six days a week, up from the original two. Yoselin’s first job, at 16, was babysitting Charlotte and her two younger siblings, fraternal twins. At 18, she became their full-time nanny.

The Ferrier family helped Bryan get into Palisades Elementary School. Mayorga asked whether the Ferriers could purchase a house that she and her family could rent, but they said no. Instead, they bought a house for the family in South L.A. and arranged for Mayorga and Salazar to pay them back over time.

“They’ve been the family who has given us everything,” Mayorga said. “They gave us work. They’ve helped us with everything they can.”

Last week, the Ferriers’ home burned down. They lost several other investment properties and are considering a move to be close to family in Kentucky. Other clients are also considering leaving Pacific Palisades permanently, Mayorga said.

The Palisades fire is costing Mayorga’s family hundreds of dollars in daily income. Salazar is looking for night shifts so he can drive Bryan to and from school when the teenager eventually returns.

Right now, the family is relying on Yoselin Salazar’s jobs as a nanny and personal assistant elsewhere on the Westside. Her friend launched a GoFundMe to help. Mayorga will begin working at an unfamiliar apartment on Wednesday.

“How many people are going to lose their apartments? How many people are going to be looking for the same jobs?” Mayorga wondered. “The worst is coming.”

Widespread impact

The fires’ economic impact has reverberated around L.A.

Eight landscaping clients of Andres Salazar’s (no relation to Manfredo) lost their homes in the Palisades fire. He said it’s too early to know just how much of a financial hit he and his family will take, especially as more of his clients are having to evacuate. He estimates he will lose about $2,000 a month.

Apolinar Rangel said eight of his landscaping clients’ homes burned down in Altadena. Other gardeners, he said, were far less fortunate — their homes burned down along with their work trucks and equipment.

Despite the loss, Andres Salazar’s clients have stepped in to help by advertising his situation on social media and by word of mouth.

Andres Salazar, a landscaper, said eight clients have lost their homes to the Palisades fire. Lacking work, he visited a client’s property on Jan. 13, 2025, in Santa Monica, which was not supposed to be on his landscaping route until later in the week.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Inclusive Action for the City, an economic justice nonprofit, has created an “Open Air Worker Emergency Fund” for people affected by the wildfires, in particular landscapers, recycling collectors and street vendors. The goal is to provide a one-time payment of $500 in cash assistance for these workers, according to the group.

Similar funds have sprung up across L.A. One had raised nearly $70,000 by Tuesday morning. The National Domestic Workers Alliance also put a call out for donations for such workers, “more than half of whom are Black, Latinx, and immigrant women.”

Edna Pineda, who has worked as a nanny in the Palisades since 2021, said she’s grateful to her employers, who are still paying her to watch their two sons as they search for a new place to live after their home burned down.

“I feel like a part of the family,” she said. “Where they go, I’m going to go with them.”

After hearing from other nannies in the area who are desperate to find work, Pineda created a Facebook page to help them. One friend, she said, had employers who left the state; she doesn’t know how she’ll pay her rent.

And service workers are grieving alongside their bosses.

Aerial view of neighborhoods destroyed by the Palisades fire.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

When Andres Salazar learned from a longtime client and friend that he had lost his Palisades home, he said he almost broke into tears.

“It was a punch to the gut,” he said. “I was just silent, and the first [thing] that came out of my mouth was: ‘I’m sorry.’”

Rangel and his son, who work together as landscapers, wept as they watched news coverage of a client’s Altadena home lost to the Eaton fire.

“We still have enough clients to be able to survive,” Rangel said. “Not the same, but it’s not going to affect us like the people who were left with nothing.”

Second family

On her way home from Santa Clara University to be with her parents and siblings, Charlotte Ferrier stopped to see her second family.

The 20-year-old gathered in the kitchen with Mayorga and her children, as Salazar tried to keep busy. Her husband wanted to paint the house, Mayorga said, “but we don’t have the money to spend. We’ve got to save.”

Yoselin Salazar, from left, father Manfredo, brother Bryan and mother Carol Mayorga stand in their South L.A. home with Charlotte Ferrier, the daughter of the family’s employers in Pacific Palisades. Ferrier’s home burned down.

(Brittny Mejia / Los Angeles Times)

They talked about their lives, which were inextricably intertwined. They finished each other’s sentences. They cracked inside jokes. Ferrier recounted how she would come over to the South L.A. house for parties and go with the family on trips to Tahoe and Las Vegas. Ferrier was more scared of Mayorga and Salazar than she was of her own parents, Yoselin Salazar said. (“You know how it is, Hispanic parents,” Yoselin Salazar said, laughing.)

A Himalayan cat, Princess, a gift from Ferrier’s mom for Yoselin’s 15th birthday, wandered around the house in search of attention. Eight chickens Ferrier’s mother gave the family years earlier rested in the coop Salazar had built for them.

Despite the six-year age difference, Ferrier is Yoselin Salazar‘s best friend. The two had planned to celebrate her upcoming 21st birthday with a concert and carne asada at the South L.A. home.

As it turned dark outside, Ferrier prepared for the drive to Newport Beach, where her family had found temporary housing until February. They had escaped their home with little more than the clothes on their backs.

While working for Ferrier’s mom, Yoselin Salazar would periodically clean out the family’s closets and bring home clothing the Ferriers no longer needed. On Sunday, she filled two bags with those same items.

She was giving it all back to the Ferrier family. She knew they needed it more than she did.