She lost everything but wanted her dignity.

"You know," she said, "I walk red carpets at movie openings all over the world. But..."

She paused and looked away.

"I'm not wearing any underwear," she whispered. "I'm sorry for saying that. This is what happened to me."

Gloria Sandoval woke up Sunday morning on a Red Cross cot in an evacuation shelter at the Pasadena Convention Center. The house she rented in Altadena burned down days earlier, and Sandoval, 67, wearing flip-flops, a sweatshirt and baggy pants, walked among others like her who were devastated by the storm of wind and flames. Through canyons and over highlands. .

"I lost my mind," she said. "I'm confused. Sometimes, I can't speak. I think to myself: 'What are you doing here?' "I wanted to go back to my home. My jewelry, my clothes, my pictures, a lot of pictures. All gone. I only had my pajamas and my kitten Chispita."

Sandoval, a longtime actor, stood outside and watched as families signed applications for aid through the Federal Emergency Management Agency and hundreds of people lined up on street corners waiting for financial aid. Some wanted business loans; others asked for shoelaces and showers. Volunteers handed out sandwiches, burritos, ready-to-eat oatmeal and oranges. Allstate Insurance workers listened to the stories, and occasionally, in a perfect city that belied suffering, there was a flash of anger in the crowd. Tears flow as a mother holds her child, or as a husband pores over documents hoping he can grasp the dates, numbers, and all the arcane details that make up life.

Exhausted, heartbroken, defiant and frightened, many people called relatives, listened to news of when the fires would be under control, and tried to decide whether to rebuild or move to a new place, one not tortured by overdevelopment and dangerous natural designs. land. .

"It's hard to accept," Jim Crowder said, standing not far from Sandoval as his fiancée filled out forms at a FEMA table. “My house was fine, but she lost hers. A lot of my family and friends lost everything. Altadena is gone. A place that has been there for centuries. Gone. You can never rebuild back to what it was. Look."

Sandoval's life began to unravel around 2 p.m. Tuesday, when high winds hit and the smoke was still far away. Night falls and the wind howls. The air was filled with a foul stench. The approaching orange glowed in the darkness. Cell phone alarms started going off. She ran to her car and saw the fire approaching her street. Before driving off around 3 a.m. Wednesday, she said she warned her neighbors. Her home was quickly engulfed.

“Look,” she said, scrolling on her phone, pulling up a video of flames crackling in the building. "I'll tell you. Look how hard the wind blows. I'm scared. I tried to save my dogs but they died. Where do I go? What's my future? I don't want to be here with my daughters Together. You know how it is." She laughed. “The first week was fine, and by the second week it was, ‘Mom, are you still here?’ I loved my privacy.”

Sandoval's daughter Claudia, who works in marketing for television and movie studios, started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money to put her mother into a new home or apartment. She also helped her mother apply for FEMA disaster relief and worked with the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists to raise funds for Sandoval to store donated furniture she might receive.

"My mother has always been independent," Claudia Sandoval said. "It was very difficult for her. Sometimes she would be as hopeful as a phoenix rising from the ashes, but a few hours later she would be dejected and say, 'I've lost everything.' "My pictures, my memories, my home. It will never be the same. Her friends and neighbors are all at the shelter. She loves it there. She has a sense of community. I offered to let her live with me. But She wants to be with them."

Sandoval fled her native El Salvador in 1979 when civil war broke out. She said her uncle was Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero, who a U.N.-established truth commission determined was assassinated by a death squad while celebrating Mass a year later. Sandoval settled in Lincoln Park, first as an extra on the set of "Scarface," then on the set of "Chef" and "Breaking Bad: Breaking Bad." El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie and the TV series Mayans. She played a café owner in "MC" and had roles in "The Rookie" and "Arrested Development."

"This is my job. You can see it on my IMDb page," said Sandoval, who is married and divorced and has two children.

She later moved to Glendale and then to Pasadena. In 2019, after months of illness and failing to make her mortgage payments, she said the bank foreclosed on her home. She found a small place in Altadena, but said she had no idea where to go next and just nodded toward where her car was parked across the street. "I'm strong," she said. "I'm Catholic. I feel God holding my hand. But I don't want to see God behind me. He needs to be in front of me. My life is changing."

Sandoval's hair was falling out and a few strands were flying, so she slicked it back. Her red nail polish is fading, and her makeup isn't as heavy as some of the photos on her IMDb page. But she carries herself with an air of elegance, talking to people, petting dogs, and filming herself on her phone, as if she's risked a role she didn't want but was forced upon her nonetheless. She fought back tears and, like many stranded at the convention center, felt overwhelmed and angry.

"Look," she said, scrolling again and pausing at the insult she couldn't stand.

"A cockroach," she said. "He was right there on the sidewalk. I broke him."

She lowered her voice. Her mood changed.

"I'm suffering from severe depression now," she said. "I screamed to God, 'Why did you leave me?' I fled the war in El Salvador. I came here to make a living. It's hard. I'm old. I want to spend my last days in peace."

The moment passed.

“I wrote a book,” she said with a smile, pulling up a chapter on her phone. "It's called 'From Hell to Freedom,' but I might change it to 'From Hell to Hollywood' or 'From Hell to Gloria.'"

This is the story of a girl who is forced to leave her country for a new one, a place where she will find joy and sorrow, and which will be her own.