Friday, November 30, 2018

Marinwood and Lucas Valley residents ‘adopt’ Paradise families devastated by fire

Marin residents ‘adopt’ Paradise families devastated by fire






Jennifer Harris-Marks, left, and Suzanne Egan connect with their “adopted” families in Paradise on Monday at Harris-Marks’ home in San Rafael. (Alan Dep/Marin Independent Journal)

By KERI BRENNER | kbrenner@marinij.com | Marin Independent Journal
PUBLISHED: November 26, 2018 at 11:22 am | UPDATED: November 28, 2018 at 5:23 am


It’s a deja vu that Jennifer Harris-Marks of Marinwood and Suzanne Egan of Lucas Valley didn’t really want to see all over again.

Even so, just as they did a year ago for the Wine Country fires in Sonoma and Napa counties, the two Marin mothers are now mobilized again to help victims of the Camp Fire in Butte County — and they are even more organized and high-tech than they were in 2017 during their first literal trial by fire.

“The message is, ‘Marin is here to help,'” said Harris-Marks, a real estate agent with Coldwell Banker in Greenbrae and a former PTA president at Mary Silveira Elementary School. “I’m so slammed at work right now, but I just tell myself, ‘I don’t need to sleep.'”
The Baker family of Paradise lost many of their belongings in the Camp Fire. From left: Nicholas, Kirsten-Grace, Marvin and Karla.
(courtesy Baker family)

Harris-Marks, who has “adopted” the four-person Baker family from Paradise through the newly created Paradise Fire Adopt-a-Family Facebook page,made her comments as she was loading up Egan’s 2011 bronze Honda Odyssey mini-van — the same one Egan used last year — with books, clothes and stuffed animals to take up to Butte County on Tuesday.

Egan, who has “adopted” the two-person Southerland family through the Facebook page, was to spend the rest of Monday at pickup stops in Marin neighborhoods to collect more donations.

“We have coordinated points of contact,” said Egan, a former PTA president at Dixie Elementary School. “We learned a lot from last year.”

see the article HERE

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