LOS ANGELES — It's a tragedy when any family loses its home to fire, but what happened to the Salay family during the Sesnon blaze a week ago just makes you shake your head and wonder about fairness in life.
The night of the Sept. 12 Metrolink crash, the Salays, like a lot of families, were home watching the tragic scene unfold on TV.
But Les and his wife, Melissa — both deeply involved with their kids in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts — decided to do more than just watch. They put on their uniforms from Boy Scout Troop 921 in suburban Northridge and spent more than 12 hours at the scene, handing out food and water to firefighters and police officers, then went to Chatsworth High School to help comfort anxious relatives of crash victims gathered at the evacuation center.
A month later, their house on Clymer Street in Northridge — almost seven miles from the Sesnon Fire — burned. It was the only house on the street to catch fire.
Investigators determined that embers blown by the Santa Ana winds got under the garage overhang, spread through the attic and destroyed most of the Salays' home.
The flames spread so fast that Les, Melissa and their three children escaped with only the clothes on their backs, an heirloom family vase and urns holding the ashes of Les' mother and father.
The Salays had been living in local motels for two weeks until their insurance company moved them into a rental home Wednesday. It's going to be a year before they can move back into their rebuilt home.
They cried a few tears when their house went up in flames, but they've cried more tears from all the support they've received from their Scouting community — including complete strangers 600 miles away in Utah — Les Salay says.
"I am a proud man who prefers to give than to get, so this is hard for me. But without them, we'd be lost."
Word of their plight had spread quickly from e-mails sent throughout the Scouting network.
"As Scouters, we come together so often for the community we don't even know," wrote Paul Oliver, district chairman for the Balboa Oaks Boy Scout District. "Now it's time to come to the aid of someone we do."
Scouting mom Janice Druez organized a group of other troop mothers and made sure the Salays had a home-cooked meal every night.
"We found out they were eating fast food because they didn't have a kitchen," Druez said. "We brought more than enough home-cooked food to their motel every night so they had some left over for lunch the next day."
Dozens of donation checks and gift cards began coming in from the Scouting community so the Salays could buy new clothes and fill up the gas tank of a car donated to them. They lost both their cars in the fire.
"A man I didn't know knocked on our motel room door one day and handed me the keys and pink slip to one of his cars," Les said. "I offered to pay him something, but he refused. He just said it was ours, free and clear."
Les had burned his feet in the fire and jokingly told Oliver in an e-mail that he was still wearing the same socks three days later.
"A gentleman came by with $200, then offered to take Melissa to the gas station to fill up our car with gas," he said.
"Before he left, he laid a pair of socks on the couch. I started crying. It wasn't the money and it wasn't the gas. It was the new socks laid over the back of the couch for me. That's when I broke down."
A 10-year-old Cub Scout sent them $13 — all the money he had saved up for a video game.
Slowly, things were starting to turn for the Salays. They even got their cat back.
"He was gone for three days and we never thought we'd see him again," Melissa said. "Our insurance adjuster found him and brought him to us."
They even got an offer from a Scoutmaster in Utah wanting to host them at his house for a week when things settle down.
"I don't know anyone in Utah, never been to Utah," Les said. "And here are these people who don't know me or my family inviting us into their home."
Maybe the most touching response was a call from a man in Scouting who had been injured in the Metrolink crash.
"He was in the third car and wanted to thank us for being at the Metrolink crash to help," Les said. "Now he wanted to know if he could help us. Funny how life turns, isn't it?"