Help Julie & Sean Rebuild After the Eaton Fire

Dear friends in the gymnastics community and beyond,

I’m reaching out to help my best friends, Julie and Sean, who are facing an impossible challenge after the Eaton Fire in California impacted their home. The two are incredibly supportive people who have dedicated so much to building a community around gymnastics, creating a space where so many of us have found friends and joy. Now they could use our help in return.

A photo I took mere weeks before the fire, hiking the same mountains where the fire would ignite and spread to the city of Altadena.

Julie & Sean's cats enjoying a nap in their new home, which they just moved into in December.

Over Christmas and New Year, I visited Julie and Sean, helping them move into their new home in Altadena—just to see it covered in unlivable ash as their neighborhood burned to the ground two weeks later. I evacuated together with them, including Julie's elderly mother who is on oxygen support with COPD, and their lovely cats. We're all safe, for which I am eternally grateful, yet this is the start of an uphill journey to recovery.

We returned to the house as soon as we could the next day, reaching a neighborhood with houses across the street burning before our eyes. Yet our house was still standing!

At first, it felt like a blessing that the house survived, but the reality sunk in when we realized that while the house was still there, the home was lost. The inside is covered with toxic ash and soot, making the place unlivable, especially in combination with the family's health issues. Most of their belongings are unrecoverable. It will take months before people are allowed back into the neighborhood and even more months to restore the house and replace everything they lost.

The neighborhood is a mix of completely burned-down houses and unlivable residences that were permeated with toxic smoke and ash.

Having your home survive in a wildfire is a blessing and a curse. Faced with survivor's guilt, it's hard to ask for help when you feel others have it even worse. But the reality is that you are still fighting with insurance to pay for restoring your house and replacing your items while facing all the same challenges of being displaced for most of the year.

Why they need help

Getting this house was a solution to the situation Julie and Sean were facing before the fire. With Julie's mom almost dying last year, they needed a place where they could live together and offer her care. Sharing mortgage payments and living expenses between the three of them would make that possible.

With their home now unlivable, Julie’s mom is back in assisted living, leading to $850 extra in her living expenses. She is also unable to contribute to the payments on the house, leaving Julie and Sean with a $500 monthly mortgage shortfall. The home in Altadena was to be the solution and instead, the fire made the family's situation even harder, now being $1,350 over budget.

I hope we can raise at least enough funds to help Julie and Sean cover the increased housing and living expenses for the family over the next year. Any additional funds we raise will go to:

How you can help

Whether you’re a part of the gymnastics community Julie and Sean helped cultivate, a beloved friend from school or work, or a family member … if you can afford it, every donation—big or small—makes a difference. Together, we can show Julie and Sean the same care and community they’ve given to so many of us.

From all my heart, thank you for your kindness and support.

Matej Jan