Living life after the flames
Woman who lost ‘soulmate’ in Sand fire leads a markedly changed life, seeks firefighter who saved her from death Editor’s Note: This is one of a series of articles looking at the Sand fire, one year after it ravaged certain portions of the Santa Clarita
Donna Fink lost more than anybody else during the Sand fire when she lost her “soulmate” Bob Bresnick.
One year later, the thing she wants more than anything else, according to her daughter, is to thank the firefighter who saved her life.
Karen Stepp, who works at the Castaic Animal Shelter for the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control, said she spoke to Fink’s daughter Thursday.
“She said her mom is looking for the fighter who saved her life,” Stepp said.
Life has not been easy since the Sand Fire took everything from her.
Donna Fink currently lives in a senior living facility in the Santa Clarita Valley, separated from her dogs.
“The dogs are being cared for at a boarding facility,” Stepp said.
Just over a year ago, Fink and Bresnick, 67, lived in an A-frame wooden house on North Iron Canyon Road, off of Sand Canyon.
Then the Sand fire hit on July 23, sweeping through Iron Canyon like “a freight train.”
Fink was rescued on the night of July 23
the house saw Mr. Bresnick and he called out to him to rescue him,” Lt. Joe Mendoza with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Homicide Bureau told The Signal shortly after the fire.
“What we know right now is that the fire was just roaring on Saturday,” he said at the time. “But
Mr. Bresnick was quite a distance away and said something back to the firefighter. It was unintelligible what he said.
“Mr. Bresnick then walked away, out of sight of the firefighter,” he said. “We believe he (Bresnick) entered his vehicle and began his way down the driveway as the fire overtook him, his car, his house - and he perished.”
Bresnick’s car, a lightcolored Honda Civic, came to rest near a truck that was also burned in the fire.
“We checked for signs of a collision and there were none,” Mendoza said at the time.
There was no evidence to confirm reports that Bresnick had tried to save any of his three dogs.
One of the dogs, a seven-year-old pit bull named Blue, survived the fire and remained on the burned down site, he said.
That dog - and later, two of her other dogs - are what Donna Fink has of her former life.
Efforts by Fink’s granddaughter Kaylee Kitabayashi to raise money for a place to live have generated a little more than $500 in the space of a year.
Fundraising, however, at the online Go Fund Me website is still in place and still relevant a year later.
“This devastating fire claimed her soulmate (Bob Bresnick), three of her loving animals, and her home,” Kitabayashi said. “My grandmother is now left homeless while trying to mourn the loss of her loved one.
“I am creating this Go Fund Me to raise money to help her with a place to live for her and her remaining three dogs, food, necessities, etc.,” Kitabayashi said in the aftermath of the fire.