Developer Rick Caruso spent his 66th birthday last Jan. 7 watching helplessly as a hurricane of flames devoured his beloved Pacific Palisades, a community where he both worked and lived. His home was heavily damaged, but it is still standing. His daughter, Gigi, and son, Justin, were not as fortunate, with each of them losing their homes in the flames.
On Wednesday, Caruso’s birthday celebration was decidedly more hopeful. Surrounded by his wife Tina and their four children, along with his Saint Monica’s Catholic Parish Monsignor, and a rabbi to “cover all the bases,” he joked, Caruso dedicated a display similar to the one that lights up the night sky in lower Manhattan every September 11 to commemorate the tragedy at the twin towers. Only “Three Beams of Light,” which Caruso calls a symbol of “reflection, gratitude and hope,” commemorate the 31 lives lost across Los Angeles County – a dozen of those victims killed in the Palisades fire that ravaged his neighborhood – along with all of those whose possessions, memories and livelihood remain in limbo after wind-fueled firestorms ripped through their lives in fires that began on Jan. 7 and were not completely extinguished until Jan. 31, 2025.
The three beams represented symbols of unity between the impacted communities and of the strength and resilience of all Angelenos.
Wednesday evening’s dedication ceremony in Palisades Village, which was completely unscathed by flames, came on a day that hundreds of the Caruso family’s neighbors took to the street for protests and fury. During a “They Let Us Burn” event, one of its organizers, lifelong resident of the Pacific Palisades Spencer Pratt, announced that instead of complaining about Mayor Karen Bass and pointing out the city’s failures in handling the Palisades fire, he was going to run to replace her. “I wish him all the best,” Caruso told Los Angeles in an interview on Wednesday night about Pratt’s Mayoral candidacy. “I think it’s great that people are getting into races.”…