“I was born in the greatest place on Earth.”

 

Pacific Palisades is filled with spots to view the ocean sunset, but Leo Rochman’s favorite is a cul-de-sac at the bottom of the hill in the bluffs overlooking the coast.

 

Leo talks about his childhood home in the Palisades with as much pride as someone can have in their hometown. Down the block from Will Rogers State Beach and off the Pacific Coast Highway, Leo spent his childhood playing in the street and biking around one of the most scenic neighborhoods in the country. When he got older, he would walk down the street and spend summer nights listening to music with friends. But one of the best days of the year, Leo said, is the Palisades’ annual Fourth of July parade – a day when the community comes out to see the 5K run, a skydiving show and fireworks.

 

“Everyone knew each other,” he said. “I was best friends with my next door neighbor – I could scream to him from our side yard, where we would grow vegetables, and then we would just play on the street and go bike around.”

 

But there’s no one around in the neighborhood today. As Leo climbs through the white ash, broken walls and ceilings that once made up his house, he bends down and picks up a mug, one of the few items he can salvage.

 

Leo and his family lost two homes in the Palisades fire – a wildfire that burned more than 23,707 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. After the fires, Leo, a fourth-year philosophy student, has chosen to do what he can to rebuild his family along with the community he loves.

Leo’s family’s roots in the Palisades go back generations. His grandfather Jerry built his own house in 1994 in Castellammare, a neighborhood right next to the Getty Villa Museum, while Leo grew up down the street at house No. 286 – a number now tattooed on his bicep. His family later moved to a neighborhood near Palisades Charter High School, or “Pali High,” when he was 13 years old.

 

His white house with green shutters, a black iron gate and a canopy roof over the front porch became a haven for Leo’s family and friends. His family always opened their doors – whether it be Zac Udy from New Zealand, who stayed with Leo for months when he had nowhere to stay, or his friend Matt Fischer, who moved to Los Angeles at 20 years old and didn’t know anyone.

 

“Leo took me in. His family took me in, and right off the bat, it was just love, and they treated me as his family,” Matt said.

 

Wyatt Standish, Leo’s childhood best friend who also lost his home in the Palisades fire, said Leo’s household was like his second family while growing up, as the two spent afternoons playing baseball together at the Palisades Recreation Center.

 

While Wyatt was a timid freshman in high school, he said Leo was the opposite – naturally charismatic and able to talk to anyone. In turn, Leo often helped Wyatt get out of his comfort zone, creating countless memories together.

 

“I had all my firsts at Leo’s house,” Wyatt said. “Like my first party – I remember I was in high school, (it) was in Leo’s backyard, and he had to drag me down from his room.”

 

During his time in high school at Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica, Leo decided he wanted to pursue college baseball, ultimately achieving his dream by playing at Oberlin College in Ohio – where he pitched for one year.

 

“He set his mind that he wanted to play college baseball, and I’ve never seen someone work as hard as he did to get to where he wanted to be,” Wyatt said.

 

Leo eventually left Oberlin in search of a better education, following in his dad and aunt’s footsteps by transferring to UCLA in fall 2023. He chose to study philosophy – like his dad and cousin – drawn to writing over test-taking.

 

Inspired by his love for baseball and streaming video games on Twitch, Leo co-launched a media brand called Enjoy The Show in 2022 and collaborated on a channel called DSARM to produce sports-related content. Together with his friends, Leo went on to attract millions of views on YouTube through the brands, posting videos of the group covering international baseball in the Bahamas and batting with retired MLB pitcher Jeremy Guthrie – all while balancing his coursework at UCLA.

 

Leo moved into a house with his content collaborators in September 2024 so they could more fully devote themselves to their work, eventually filming on the field at Yankee Stadium when the LA Dodgers won the 2024 World Series. The house is decked out with everything baseball – cleats, bats and jerseys all branded with the groups’ last names – to commemorate different chapters of their journey as a content brand. Leo was splitting his time between the content house and his home in the Palisades when winter quarter started.

 

On Jan. 7, Leo drove to school for his first day of classes for winter quarter. As he made his way to school, he started to get notifications on his phone about a fire near his family’s neighborhood in the Palisades.

“Fires aren’t a foreign thing to us,” he said. “I’ve grown up always being aware of them.”

 

Leo kept checking in with his mother on the way to school, calling her once he reached his first class of the day. While waiting to speak with a professor in the hopes of getting off the class waitlist, he saw his neighborhood move from an evacuation warning to a mandatory order.

 

With his dad and sister out of the house and his mom stuck in traffic, Leo left campus to get his two cats, Ollie and Jonathan.

 

“My mom’s freaking out because she has her purse and nothing else, and she can’t get back to our house,” he said. “So at that point, I’m running to my car, going past Royce Hall. Any second counts here – I need to get there now.”

 

In retelling the story, Leo spoke matter-of-factly – knowing he would do everything he could to protect his house.

 

Flooring it on the Pacific Coast Highway, he watched smoke pour from his neighborhood. Leo reached a police blockade at Temescal Canyon Road, where an officer would not let him through in his car – but told him that if he chose to go on foot, he would look the other way. Leo immediately started the two-mile journey to his house.

 

He looked up the hill toward home. Dark smoke filled the sky. He knew this was a bad sign – dark smoke meant the fire was still burning strong. People were fleeing the Palisades in cars, later abandoning them on the Pacific Coast Highway because of traffic. Leo watched as people fled on foot – including a gardener who gave his mask to Leo, who was seemingly the only one running toward the fire.

 

There’s no way the fire can jump Sunset Boulevard, he kept thinking.

 

“My town is not going to burn,” he said. “They’re going to protect us at all costs. They have air tankers. They have trucks. They have everything fighting this fire.”

 

As he ran into his home, he was confident he would be able to return the next day. But with the smoke getting worse, Leo knew his time that day was limited. He tried to retrieve his cats, only to find them visibly scared and refusing to go into their carrier.

The cats ran upstairs, and as he followed, it occurred to him to grab two family photo albums to bring back for his parents, to flip through while waiting for the evacuation to lift. He then walked out onto the street and called for help. A neighbor he had never met before came in and held the carrier open while Leo got the cats in.

 

Not knowing what else to do, Leo started walking back to his car two miles away with his cats, the photo albums and medicine his mom had asked for – which ended up as the only belongings saved from the fire.

 

“I replay walking on my street and deciding to leave every single day,” he said. “There’s guilt that comes from it even though I know I’m not responsible and there wasn’t a ton I could have done.”

 

The wind picked up so much that palm trees started falling. Embers jumped around, igniting entire trees on fire. Police drove down the street with bullhorns ordering every person to evacuate. A line of cars waited to leave the Palisades as the smoke grew worse and worse.

 

Leo made it to his car right as police extended the Pacific Coast Highway closure to Santa Monica, much further away from his house. If Leo hadn’t left campus to go to his house when he did, he never would have made it, he said.

 

When he arrived at his godfather’s house, he found his sister crying and his parents watching the news in shock. Leo stayed up until the early morning, watching online as his hometown burned – his elementary school, his favorite restaurant Beech Street Cafe, apartments, houses, nursing homes. Once he saw Pali High catch fire, he knew his house was in serious danger. But as long as it stayed standing until the morning, he thought things would be OK.

 

“I’m going to wake up, my house is going to be there in the morning, and I’m going to go and protect it,” he said.

 

The next morning, Leo, along with his dad, his godfather, Matt and Wyatt, began a four-mile trek from Santa Monica to their homes in an effort to protect them. With road closures blocking cars, they walked – passing neighbors’ houses reduced to ash, fallen trees and power lines, and active fires burning on the beach.

 

They made it to the bottom of Leo’s hill around noon, as the smoke darkened. They watched as houses, cars and propane tanks along the street caught fire. Together, Leo and his dad climbed the hill and reached their street 20 minutes later. Finally, they caught a glimpse of their house. There was smoke in the backyard. The neighboring house on one side was completely burnt to the ground, and the house on the other side was on fire.

 

He knew it was too late. As a final hope to save their house, their street and their neighborhood, they called the fire department.

 

“I’m calling 911 – I’m like, ‘Please come to my neighborhood. I see 10 houses. Maybe you can save them,’” Leo said. “They said, ‘They’re where they need to be, sir.’”

 

They left. It was too dangerous to stay and watch.

 

The house where he hosted Matt for Thanksgiving. The house where he made Wyatt walk down to his first party in high school. Where he played shuffleboard and table tennis in the backyard. Everything he hoped to pass on to his future children. His and his sister’s childhood boxes, autographed baseballs, his high school baseball jersey, his childhood photos, artwork from when he was in preschool, years’ worth of birthday cards, his father’s cleats from when he ran high school track at Windward School, a signed note from grandfather, who had recently died, that said, “Leo, success is written all over the way you carry yourself.”

 

All gone.

 

“I have nothing that is from my life that I can pass on to my kids that is before I was 18 or 20,” he said. “The place where I found the most peace – I’d wake up every morning and walk down the street, look at the ocean, look at dolphins, talk to my neighbors. That’s all gone.”

 

The Palisades are barely recognizable now. Driving through his town with Leo and his friends, we see a massive military vehicle where the National Guard is stationed before we enter the downtown business district. Only the brick frames of buildings – once home to businesses such as Café Vida and Casa Nostra Trattoria – now stand. People wait in line at World Central Kitchen tents while recovery workers in all-white hazmat suits examine rubble. As we turn onto a street, I can see the entire horizon. Houses that once blocked the view are no longer there.

 

As soon as he was allowed back into the Palisades, Leo attempted to return almost every day to his family’s properties. With the help of Fire Station 15, specifically a firefighter named Chris Vilaubi, Leo was able to find remnants of china, some of his parents’ artwork and the dishwasher – which still contained plates covered in sauce.

 

His first goal was to find his mother’s engagement ring and wedding bands, which she had put in the family’s fireproof safe while gardening before the fires broke out. On Jan. 25, the firefighters came to help while off shift before the rain would potentially wash items away. After finding the safe, the firefighters used a gas-powered saw to open it up, only to reveal that almost everything in the safe had melted. Determined to bring something back to his mother, Leo sifted through the ash and the melted objects himself. He pulled out the engagement ring, along with her wedding bands and other jewelry – 18 days after the fire started.

 

“That was the first real win that we had,” he said. “Fire Station 15 – they’re the greatest people ever.”

 

One of the firefighters recognized the bumper sticker on Leo’s truck that said “Enjoy The Show”  and realized he knew Leo from his content creation. As thanks for helping them, Leo sent the firefighters some batting gloves for their kids who play baseball. 

 

When Leo enters his family’s properties, he puts on a mask, gloves and work boots – prepared to be covered in sticky white ash and debris by the time he’s done going through the day’s rubble. Rummaging through the wreckage only to find a few items began to take a physical and emotional toll, he said. But everything he was able to salvage – the plates, mugs, salsa bowls, a coin from his father’s collection – he put in a box for his future kids to one day show them the place that was home to so many people who needed it.

 

“The five or so days that I spent at the property, digging and trying to do stuff – it was stuff that was necessary,” he said. “Because it was just part of me saying goodbye and coming to terms with everything that happened.”

 

In the aftermath, Matt set up a GoFundMe for both Leo and Wyatt’s families – something Leo said he was initially uncomfortable with and only wanted if half the proceeds went to community organizations and businesses. They ended up donating to Beech Street Cafe, Café Vida and to Louvenia Jenkins – a 96-year-old woman who was one of the first Black female homeowners in Pacific Palisades.

 

“I know how much of a struggle people are in – and they’re in worse places than we are,” Leo said.

 

Whenever Leo saw neighbors arrive to search through their own properties, he lent a helping hand by offering protective masks and showing them how to safely search through the rubble. He helped one man search for a Jesus necklace that had been in his family for over 40 years. While they were not able to find the necklace, Leo helped him recover some of the family’s plates and ceramics.

He soon realized that many of his neighbors were not prepared for what they were coming home to – that there was little to recover from the rubble. One neighbor returned by himself to see his property for the first time since the fire. Leo stayed by his side so he wouldn’t have to face it alone.

 

“You just want to talk to them because you want to feel this connection and feel like it’s kind of normal, even though you don’t really know them,” he said.

 

Leo feels a stronger bond with the people of the Palisades now more than ever, he added. On one of Leo’s drives through the town, a sign outside a neighbor’s property said, “Thank you to all our wonderful neighbors. We can rebuild this beautiful town together.”

 

Before stopping at his house, Leo took me to a vista point near Marquez Knolls overlooking the Santa Ynez Canyon on the left and the Santa Monica mountains ahead in the distance. Standing with Leo before another stunning view ravaged by the fires, I started to understand the scale of the disaster. The Palisades fire burned everywhere from the Palisades Highlands to Will Rogers State Beach, from the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu to Sunset Boulevard in the Palisades. Looking at the Palisades from the bottom of the hill, what once showed a row of houses is now an array of black soot and ash.

 

“That’s why I wanted to bring you here,” he later told me.

 

Leo recently helped his parents move into a new rental. Rent hikes immediately after the fires made it difficult for them to find a place, he said. Leo, who was set to graduate in June, met with counselors at UCLA and decided to become a part-time student going forward so he can help his family rebuild and focus on his content creation while finishing his degree.

 

He added that his friends and content crew have been his strongest support system, showing him love either through listening, finding practical solutions or distracting him with a laugh – something his friends were not short of at all on the day I spent with them. He added that Matt especially has been with him since everything started – staying with him on the phone when he retrieved his cats and visiting the rubble with him many times after. The fire has only affirmed Leo’s love for his hometown, and Wyatt agrees.

 

“There’s no doubt in my mind, and I’m sure Leo would say the same thing, that I still hopefully want to one day raise my family in the Palisades,” Wyatt said. “I don’t think either of us would ever let a fire stop us from doing that.”

 

When Leo drove me through Castellammare, the neighborhood where his grandfather’s house burned down, I got out of the car and almost couldn’t believe my eyes. Standing in front of the rubble, the house gave way to a view of the never-ending ocean with the sun setting – the type of view that is impossible not to get lost in.

 

As I stood there watching the sunset, Leo walked past a completely melted car in what was once the garage and noticed a few plates left untouched in the ash. He started digging with his hands. After a minute, he found a ceramic pot, a tin mug, a couple of teacups and a few smaller plates – some of the only physical memories of the house his grandfather built. He walked the items back to his truck, one by one.

 

We watched as the sky became increasingly orange, the waves continuing to fall on the shore.

 

“The sunset’s still beautiful,” Leo said. “The view is still there, and that gives you hope for a lot of things. Gives you hope that our land is still good, but it also gives you hope like, ‘Let’s rebuild.’”