Carmen McReynolds
Carmen McReynolds was so independent and resourceful her family held out hope until the very last moment that she had escaped the Tubbs Fire — a conflagration that erased entire Santa Rosa neighborhoods in a matter of hours last week. Until a few years ago, McReynolds, 82, was a motorcycle-riding septuagenarian cruising down the open roads of Sonoma County, based at her longtime home on Kilarney Circle. She planned every detail, including the end of her life, with the estate she established after decades working as a doctor in the East Bay set to go to humanitarian organizations.
But the family’s hope vanished in an instant Saturday night, when relatives were notified by authorities that search teams found her inside her 1973 Mercedes convertible, inside the garage of the home she had lived in for the past quarter century.
“The house was completely leveled,” said her nephew Gabriel Coke of San Jose. “We know she was trying to escape the fire. But without electricity, there was no way to open the garage door.” Authorities identified McReynolds in part through serial numbers from her double-hip replacement, Coke said. Born Carmen Colleen McKinley, McReynolds grew up in Southern Colorado when her father served as the town doctor in Durango, a town about 20 miles north of the New Mexico border.
Coke remembers his aunt as a trailblazer who once considered Joan Baez among her friends. “She was one of the only female doctors of her generation,” he said. “She was extremely independent.” McReynolds was married in the 1960s but later divorced. McReynolds was acutely aware — and wary — of the fire dangers of the area.
“She had a fear of wildfire, and had commented before how she didn’t feel safe about that,” Coke said.