Former Sammamish family's mementos reduced to ashes

By Julia Sommerfeld and Ashley Bach
Seattle Times staff reporters

	SANDY HUFFAKER Troy Romero looks over what's left of his home just outside Ramona, Calif. The family of seven had two minutes in the middle of the night to get out of their house, which was one of the first hit by the fires in the San Diego area. They only recently moved into the custom-built home.
	E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Other links Fire continues to devour entire neighborhoods

Troy Romero returned to his personal ground zero for the first time yesterday. After two days of holding out hope that there would be something left to salvage — a baby photograph, his daughter's beloved China set, any memento of his 18-year marriage — the part-time Washington resident returned to his Southern California rambler to find only devastation.

"There's nothing left," he said, surveying the pile of crumbled roofing tiles and twisted metal. "It looks like a bomb dropped right into the middle of our house."

He yearned to scavenge for signs of his former life, but the remains were still giving rise to tendrils of smoke two days after the state's biggest wildfire swept through the back country and into his back yard.

His five kids begged to see the house, but after Romero and his wife, Kim, saw the exposed nails and ragged tile shards for themselves first, they knew it wasn't safe; some of their kids escaped the house without shoes and were wearing borrowed flip-flops.

"Lexi will be happy to see that," he said, pointing out his 6-year-old daughter's surviving Big Wheel, upturned on the driveway. "I always get on her for not putting it away in the garage and, look, it's the only thing that made it."

A Sammamish city councilman, Romero moved his family to Ramona's rolling foothills about 45 minutes northeast of San Diego a little over a year ago. He still commutes between his Bellevue and San Diego law firms each week.

Saturday night, the family spotted an orange glow in the distance. Before going to bed after midnight, Romero said it looked about 25 miles away; too far away to worry about, he thought, like seeing North Bend from the Sammamish Plateau. "I'm from Washington; I had no ideas fires could spread at 35 miles an hour," he said.

Awoken by police sirens at 2 a.m., he ran outside to find the blaze about a mile away. He was ordered to get the family out of the house in two minutes. He raced down the hallway, shouting for the kids to grab clothes and their favorite things.

"It's funny what you take when you have just two minutes," he says. Taylor, 9, grabbed a stuffed dog, a book and a few shirts and pants. Brittany, 15, seized her scrapbooks. Twelve-year-old Zach packed his soccer uniform and cleats. He sadly admits to forgetting the class pet, a gecko. Kim Romero had no time to pack for herself; she used the two minutes to gather diapers, blankets and clothes for 2-year-old Halli. The only item she grabbed for herself was a well-worn Mariners T-shirt.

"It just makes me sick that I didn't have 10 minutes' warning to grab photos and videos of the kids growing up," she said. "But you don't think of that when you have a policeman yelling for you to get out of the house."

Said Troy Romero: "I can't let myself go there. It's too sad. I had a baseball-card collection with 40,000 cards I've collected since I was a little boy that I was going to give to my son. Money can't replace that."

Their home was one of the first hit by fires in the San Diego area. The neighborhood looks like it was subjected to random bombings; houses on either side of the Romeros' were untouched, but the one across the street burned to the ground.

The seven Romeros have been staying in downtown Ramona with Linda Sulzen, a friend from church, since early Sunday. The front hall of Sulzen's home, now bustling with 15 people with nothing to do and nowhere to go, is lined with suitcases in case they get orders to evacuate.

Out of school until at least Monday, the kids are getting stir crazy, Sulzen warned. Because of health concerns about the smoke still settled over the area, they remained in the house the first two days. But yesterday, the kids braved the stifling haze and played in Sulzen's front yard. Lexi, Taylor and Halli made mud volcanoes while Zach doused his sisters and pretend fires with a water gun.

Zach would like to go back to Washington "where there aren't any fires." Taylor wants her parents to rebuild the exact same house on the same 6-acre plot. She was just getting used to their new house. Kim Romero, who helped design the 5,600-square-foot stucco home, can't imagine starting over. They just finished moving into the home from a nearby rental a couple of months ago.

Troy Romero is torn. Half of him thinks they should cut their losses and return to Sammamish. The other half isn't done with California.

When his firm opened an office in San Diego last year, he decided this was the opportunity to give his family "a California experience," complete with Disneyland passes and a swimming pool set to be installed by next summer.

Romero has been involved in Sammamish politics since it incorporated in 1999 — serving as mayor for two years and city councilman for another two. His most recent crusade has been to build a skate park. He hops on a 6:30 a.m. flight to Seattle on Tuesdays and heads back to San Diego on Thursday evenings, attending council meetings on Wednesday nights.

Jon Rands, a bishop at the Romeros' former church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Sammamish, shared the family's story with the congregation on Sunday and asked members to look in their photo collections for any of the Romeros. They belonged to the church for more than a decade, so "everyone knows and loves them," he said. The photos will be given to the family.

"They are insured and money is not needed," Rands said. "It is more important to help them get back their memories."

Seattle Times staff reporter Leslie Fulbright contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company