You see it all the time in L.A. despite the sprawl and fragmented civic culture: Neighborhoods, communities of interest, social networks come together and achieve something greater than themselves.
In the last 48 hours, the people who own horses, the people who care about animals and each other pulled together to provide safe shelter to hundreds of animals.
At Pierce College’s farm, dozens of volunteers showed up yesterday as a daylong line of trailers pulled up with horses from the North Valley in need of a safe haven — 168 horses in all were stabled there.
They put up temporary stalls, they washed and fed the horses, they called in veterinarians to deal with injured animals. They call themselves a “family” and a family takes care of its own.
That’s what keeps coming up for me about the possibility of all the “families” coming together, putting aside their differences, and turned this into the greatest city on earth, the city it ought to be with its perfect climate, its unlimited freedom and opportunity.
At Pierce, I talked with veteran L.A. County Animal Control Officer Mary Lukins who took charge of the chaos at the barn as she has done before when fires threatened the community and others. Tina Harmon who stables a horse at Stoney Point Ranch told me of her experiences, of how firefighers, neighbors and volunteers showed what kind of people we really are.
Pierce College was too far for me to move the 2 yearlings, one old horse and one adult horse, so we went to Gibson Ranch in Shadow Hills. Dale Gibson had horses evacuated from Kagel Canyon (near Blue Star mobile home park) there as well as ours from Little Tujunga Cyn and was a gracious host. I cannot thank him enough!!!