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PARADISE — Mary and Cass Stevens have finally made it home — nearly 15 months after news of the Camp Fire left them stranded in their Antioch driveway right as they were moving to Paradise.
The house they were in the middle of buying survived the fire but required extensive repairs. This month, the couple met back up with the very same moving crew that had to abruptly stop on Nov. 8, 2018, to finally bring their belongings into their “forever home.” They hadn’t seen any of their stuff since placing it in storage in San Leandro at the end of that fateful day. The journey has been riddled with delays and difficult negotiations with insurance and contractors.
Now, they want to share their story to encourage others thinking of returning to Paradise to persevere.
“We could have just walked away from this property, and we chose not to,” said Cass Stevens a few months ago, after yet another hurdle appeared delaying their move. “This is where our dream home was, and we followed through.”
This month, on his porch overseeing a hillside now denuded of pines but ringing with the sounds of hammers and a gurgling creek he hadn’t noticed before, he added: “Paradise will come back. It’ll be different, but it’ll be back.”
The couple had always dreamed of retiring to the ridge. They lived in Magalia in the 1980s and got married in the old Magalia Community Church before raising their family in the Bay Area. Two years ago, after searching for a home for the next chapter of their lives, they settled on a pretty wooden house on Seneca Drive. Their insurance policy kicked in at midnight on Nov. 7.
On the morning of Nov. 8, 2018, a moving crew showed up to move their belongings. Giddy with excitement, the couple locked arms and did a little dance to Eddie Money’s song “Two Tickets to Paradise.” Then they received a call from a friend: There was a fire heading for the town, and it looked bad. They told the moving trucks to stop.
“We went from being on top of the world to my wife sitting on the curb, crying,” recalled Cass Stevens.
Though they were immensely grateful, they were not fleeing for their lives like tens of thousands of others; they were caught in limbo. They were unable to stay in their previous house and unable to move forward. Their insurance company agreed to put them up into a hotel while they figured it out. They assumed the flames had destroyed the house and started looking at other homes for sale.
It was only a couple months later that Mary Stevens caught a glimpse of the house on Seneca on someone’s video of Paradise and shrieked for her husband to see: Their dream home had made it.
Then they had to decide whether or not to stick with it. Real estate transactions had been frozen during the early weeks of the disaster, and they had yet to officially sign their deed. Their agent was ready to keep going. The couple agreed.
“We had been looking at five other homes in Paradise, and they had all burned down,” said Mary Stevens. “Ours did not. I saw it as a sign from God.”
They didn’t waver. They finalized the sale around six months after the fire. Then began the search for contractors for repairs.
The pale blue carpet with heavy smoke damage had to be torn out. The roof had to be redone. The scorched siding still needs to be replaced.
Cass Stevens began living part-time at the empty house so he could more easily make appointments. He had to start again from scratch, once, when he thought his first contractor was charging too much. He called it an ongoing “battle.”
Mary Stevens, meanwhile, had to delay her retirement because of the additional costs and hassles of the delayed move. For the first time in 35 years of marriage, they spent long periods of time separated.
Slowly, the house became more homey: Sick of the air mattress, they got a real bed. They bought a television screen for entertainment and news. A tool shed outside replaced the one that had turned to ash.
Cass Stevens still missed specific items that were in storage, like the pistols with which he loves target shooting and his motorcycles.
Mary Stevens, though, had mostly forgotten about her other belongings over time. She realized she didn’t really need all of it, and now wants to donate most of it to local churches.
What she’s been most looking forward to is bringing her horse, Joey, to the property. He was already boarding in Butte Valley at the time of the fire. An ember flew into his face, and he lost an eye. Slowly, she’s been retraining him to walk, guiding him with her hand and her shadow.
And there’s another thing she’s eager to accomplish now that the home is finally fully furnished: a first real housewarming, with a barbecue spread for her new neighbors.
