[When fire victims return home and find nothing but charred wreckage, many assume their irreplaceable belongings also perished. But Jeff Levy sees a chance to find their treasured keepsakes during their greatest time of need.
Armed with metal detectors, a shovel, sifting screens and a 60-pound magnet, Levy has helped recover belongings for wildfire victims for more than 30 years – bringing tears of joy and shrieks of elation to despondent victims who have lost most everything else.
Since the recent Southern California wildfires ravaged Los Angeles-area communities, Levy has saved an elderly man’s retirement stash; retrieved a couple’s diamond engagement ring; and salvaged a symbolic gold heirloom just in time for the Lunar New Year.
Hours after the deadly Eaton Fire broke out, Mark Pastor’s cat woke him up at 2:30 a.m. He looked out the window to see a “firestorm” racing toward his house. Pastor and his fiancée, Lisa De Lange, grabbed their pets and sprinted out the door – leaving behind her diamond engagement ring.
The flames engulfed their Altadena house. Days later, the newly homeless couple was staying in a motel when a mutual friend connected them with Levy. “The big thing that we wanted more than anything was to find her ring,” Pastor said.
When Levy and Pastor trekked back to Altadena, “it was like a bomb was dropped on the neighborhood,” Pastor said. “Seeing the house, it was just devastating. I figured there’s no way we’re gonna find anything in all this.”
The two men spent six hours digging before Levy unearthed the ring. That’s when Pastor “really broke down,” Levy said.
The “most interesting and probably the most valuable” find came when Levy helped a man recover his retirement fund – which had been stashed in a closet. The retired teacher “wasn’t comfortable with the economy during the beginning of Covid and converted all of his retirement into gold bars and literally put them in the closet, in a shoebox,” Levy said.
While Levy was helping another family in the Palisades, he noticed Ken Lin struggling for hours to find heirlooms in the torched remains of his childhood home – small Chinese gold ingots. Engraved ingots made of real or imitation gold are staples in many Chinese homes for Lunar New Year – which was only days away. The keepsakes symbolize prosperity – something that seemed implausible for the family that lost everything.
Levy grabbed a shovel and helped dig through the Lins’ rubble with them. “I set up a (sifting) screen, and right away I found” a gold ingot, Levy said. The family “was shocked that I found it so quickly because they were digging for a long time.”
The small, golden nugget had a message engraved in Chinese: “Double happiness.” Lin was stunned by Levy’s benevolence and skill. “He had the strategy and the tools,” Lin said. “He’s like the angel of debris.”
Levy said he’s grateful he recovered the symbolic treasure for the family before Lunar New Year – a time for purging bad luck and celebrating hope for a prosperous year. “I don’t know if it was a coincidence,” he said. “But I think it was a very good sign for better things to come after the tragedy.”
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