My home, my home office and the homes of most of my local friends burned completely in the Corral fire. Even my daughter’s Chihuahua died in the blaze.
The fire has cost me such a huge part of my life! I’ve lost what was my excellent credit rating. I’ve been forced to sell my empty, charred land for less than 10% of its bank-appraised value just four months before the fire. The fire cost me the loss of about seven months of work, since all my inventory and contracts were in ashes.
My daughter, age 16, has suffered extreme emotional distress from the death of her dog and all her possessions, including cherished gifts and cards, her clumsy pottery from Webster, her proud yearbooks from Malibu High and all the other touchstones of childhood most people take for granted. I miss my great-aunt’s china, brought over in a crate through Ellis Island in the 1800s, heirloom jewelry and furniture, but most of all-the baby pictures and the little silver jar in which I kept her first baby tooth.
People think we should be “all better now.” Even Malibu residents, who surely should know better, ask, “Are you back in your house yet?” Life has gone on, but I assure you my neighbors and I are still spending many hours dealing with the financial, legal, emotional and practical aftermath. It’s been 14 months!
When I look at the faces of Coppock and Anderson in the paper, I see two stupid, selfish men. Not boys. Not dumb MHS kids who still can’t figure out cause-and-effect (or are too stoned to think things through.) Let’s not shove these men in a cell somewhere. Let’s pay the wages of some sheriff with a rifle, clamp some leg irons on these guys and give them shovels, picks and rakes and make them clean up the canyon homes and the hundreds of lives they’ve helped ruin. Let’s apply the old “eye for an eye” principle and make the punishment fit the crime. I don’t want them in some prison yard, wasting their lives. Let them realize the enormity of the anguish they have caused.
I hope judge Dunn will read this letter. The county would save money, the residents could feel vindicated, and the young men would leave their indentured servitude with a new respect for the high price of folly. Maybe they’d go on to be valuable, responsible citizens instead of ex-cons.
Wendy Keller