Polina Ken searches through the ashes on her property. She saved almost nothing from the flames because she was outside watering down her home when she was told to evacuate, jumping in her car with only her phone and the clothes she was wearing after trying unsuccessfully to find her dog, Waldo.
What happened to Polina Ken one year ago on September 2, 2025, when a lightning-sparked fire turned her Chinese Camp home and almost everything she owned to ash and mangled metal, might lead some to self-pity.
Not Polina, who as a Cambodian refugee has had to rebuild her life from scratch more than once.
“I’m tough. I do anything to survive. I don’t give up,” Polina said after the fire.
Fifteen years ago, Polina moved to the small Gold Rush era town of Chinese Camp, Calif. which had an official population of 150. Many of the historic buildings in the town were destroyed in the fire, which leveled at least 50 homes.
Polina credits the American Red Cross, her family and her community for helping her cope with her losses.
The Red Cross arrived the day after the fire, she said, offering food, water and supplies for clearing her property, as well as money for essential needs, plus help replacing lost prescription glasses and medications.
Friends gave her some of the Cambodian-made clothing she loves to wear, and she found donated items to replace other lost things.
Two days after the fire, a neighbor told Polina he’d found her 14-year-old dog, Waldo, waiting outside her gate. Polina could not find Waldo when she was ordered to evacuate and had been convinced he had died in the fire.
Polina and Waldo the dog relax in the garden behind the Chinese Camp Store, which became a hub for the disaster recovery efforts of the community affected by the fire. Polina says Waldo’s temperament was drastically changed by the fire and he has become much friendlier and welcoming towards both people and dogs since the experience.
Another neighbor, grateful to Polina for past help, allowed her to sleep on a sofa in his living room, with Waldo nearby.
“I don’t feel hopeless. I feel the Red Cross right beside me, helping me through,” Polina said in the wake of the fire. They, along with her friends and family, “make me feel comfortable and (feel) hope so I can move on,” she said.
When Polina was 15, the Cambodian Pol Pot regime imprisoned her family in a camp. At 19, the International Red Cross helped her get a visa to emigrate to the US. She arrived weighing only 80 pounds and speaking not a word of English, with two sons, neither yet a year old, and her husband. When the boys were six, they divorced and she raised them as a single mother, working in jobs including a fish processing plant and a bakery. Later, she owned a flower shop.
In Chinese Camp she found a home. For $25,000 she purchased an abandoned home on an acre and a half and set to work renovating the house and building a lush garden with the help of her friends and family.
On the morning of the fire, lightning began about 7 a.m. and continued loudly and moving closer all morning, Polina says. She saw smoke and went outside to spray water on her cabin to protect it.
“All of a sudden, boom, in front of my house, the tree flamed,” she says. The Sheriff appeared and told her, “Get out now, get out now.”
Polina and her neighbors got out safely.
One corner of Polina Ken’s property survived the September 2 fire, a small portable screen structure she and her dog Waldo liked to relax in at night. As almost all else burned, it survived intact down to the solar-powered lights that continue to twinkle each night, Polina says.
Polina says her property has been cleaned up, and she bought a storage shed with donated money, but she still has no water and no power to the property.
But her life has taken a change for the better after the fire. She is now engaged to a man from Florida who came to Chinese Camp to help clean up after the fire.
The two of them, and Waldo, have been traveling around the country in a recreational vehicle, something Polina says she always wanted to do.
The fire destroyed the manuscript of a book she had written about her life, but Polina says now she can rewrite it, “with a happy ending.”
It’s one year later, and disasters continue to devastate communities like Chinese Camp. To donate to help people like Polina, please go to RedCross.org/donate. To become a Red Cross volunteer, please visit RedCross.org/volunteer.
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