Nearly a year after the 2018 Pacific Palisades wildfire destroyed her home, Ricki Lake thought she'd lost something irreplaceable: boxes of family photographs. Then a stranger found them at a flea market and decided to track her down.
Artist Patricia Scanlon was browsing the Pasadena City College Flea Market when she spotted a box of old photos. One face kept appearing in the images—a woman she recognized. A quick search confirmed it: these were Ricki Lake's pictures, probably salvaged from the rubble and sold second-hand without anyone realizing their significance.
Scanlon posted on Instagram asking if anyone knew how to contact Lake. The response was immediate. Commenters explained that Lake had lost her home in the fires and would almost certainly want these back. Within hours, Scanlon had found a way to reach her.
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Start Your News DetoxLake's reaction was raw. In a video, she described the moment she thought she'd made peace with the loss—the photographs, the memorabilia, all gone. "I made peace with the fact that my photographs and memorabilia were gone," she said. "But turns out they were at the Pasadena Flea Market."
The recovered box held more than just random snapshots. Inside were images of Lake with her now-adult son, Milo—moments she'd resigned herself to remembering only in her mind. "These pictures are so priceless to me," she told Scanlon. "The fact that I lost all of these images in the fire... I thought they were gone forever."
What makes this story stick isn't just the recovery itself. It's the small decision Scanlon made to spend time tracking down a stranger, to prioritize returning something that mattered to someone else over keeping a curiosity. It's the kind of friction-free kindness that doesn't make headlines often—but when it does, it reminds people that this impulse still exists.
Lake summed it up simply: "We all need good news these days and I feel like this is leaving me with such a beautiful feeling about the human race."
