Arthur Simoneau, 69, a hang glider pilot for 40 years, is a calculated adventurer. So as residents fled the Palisades Fire on Tuesday, Simoneau moved closer to hell.
His longtime friend, hang glider pilot Steve Murillo, said he learned of the evacuation order at his home in Topanga in the Santa Monica Mountains when he returned from a ski trip in Mammoth .
Simoneau moved on.
"He's going home to save it if he can," Murillo said. Murillo spoke with Simoneau as his friend drove back to Topanga on Tuesday night. "Arthur is the kind of guy who once he sets his mind to something, you can't really talk him out of it."
Murillo texted instructions to his friend — which roads were open and which were closed. He never received another text message.
Last summer, Arthur Simoneau flew a glider. His friends said he was one of the pioneers of the sport and would go hang gliding every weekend.
(Kia Rawanfar)
Officials discovered Simoneau's body Thursday, another grim revelation in the rising death toll from one of the worst wildfires in the state's history. As of Saturday evening, Los Angeles County reported 16 deaths.
Murillo said Simono was found near his door, apparently trying to defend it.
Friends and neighbors said Simoneau represented the best of Topanga, a tight-knit, bohemian mountain community known for welcoming free-spirited people.
He is soft-spoken and eccentric, with long silver hair tied into a ponytail. Every weekend is an opportunity to hang glide. Back then, he even went barefoot. Then he put on sandals.
"He was a resident of Topanga. He was a good fit," said friend Malury Silberman, who knew him through the Sylmar Hang Gliding Association. “Kind of like a grown-up hippie—the guy never had a harsh word.”
His neighbor, Susan Dumond, said everyone in the area knew him as the unofficial caretaker of Swenson Drive, where he lived. He was one of the first people to move to the remote roads in the early 1990s. He spent the next few decades using his own money to restore it. He greets all his neighbors with a smile and a peace sign, and is known to leave a trail of freshly yanked invasive species in his wake wherever he goes.
"I always knew he was on the street because there were weeds all over the street," said Dumond, who lives a few houses away.
Smoke was rising from the hillside near Topanga Village off Topanga Canyon Road.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Dumond evacuated Tuesday night, with smoke filling the air and winds so strong she could barely open her car door. She returned Thursday to obtain medical equipment for her husband.
As she was leaving around 4:30 p.m., she saw a deputy outside Simoneau's home.
"His nature was to protect the community, protect his house. I think that's what he did," Dumond said. “He cares deeply about the community and is willing to do whatever it takes to help the community.”
The community, located on a windy road in a fire-prone canyon, is no stranger to devastating fires. In 1992, a year after Simoneau built the home, a wildfire swept through the town, claiming 350 homes and three lives.
Jim Wiley, a town plumber who grew up in the area, remembers talking to Simoneau after the 1993 fire. Like Willie, Simoneau decided not to evacuate, and told Willie it was a good thing he didn't evacuate—he had been able to put out the embers that started drifting in after the heat broke through the small bathroom window.
"If that guy hadn't been there to put it out, it would have burned pretty bad," Wiley said.
This time, the hellfire was too intense. A fire destroyed a house on Thursday, destroying steel beams and leaving only a black shell of bricks. Inside were only three charred cars and a few motorcycles.
Simoneau decided to stay because the house he built with his own hands was a great source of pride for him, his family said.
Simono's son Andrei wrote in an article GoFundMe page He always knew that his father — who he said rode a motorcycle at “Social Security” age and wore a helmet that said “Novelty Purpose Only” — “wasn’t going to die of old age or disease.”
"It was always in the back of our minds that he would die in spectacular Arthurian style," he wrote. "Unfortunately, he died in the Palisades Fire protecting his house and doing what he did best: being a badass and doing things that only he was brave enough (or crazy enough) to do."
News of Arthur Simoneau's death shocked the area's close-knit hang gliding community. Friends say he is one of the few established hang glider pilots who has been practicing the sport for decades.
(Mary Marasco)
Many local hang glider pilots say Simoneau was fearless and although his greatest passion was adventure, he was very careful in the sky.
"He was always a very cautious man," said Gary Mell, his friend of 40 years.
His friends say the world of hang gliding has lost a pioneer.
Kia Ravanfar, 40, said that when hang gliding became popular - people would design their own gliders from hardware store materials - most of the old-timers were either dead or had long since Stopped.
Simoneau is one of the few who did neither.
"He doesn't live life as if he's older," Lavanfar said. He said Simoneau's recent fly in Owens Valley is what Mavericks are to surfing. "I always imagined him gliding until he couldn't walk."