Smith: They loved Sonoma County but found Paradise aptly named

It was just in April that ex-Santa Rosans Nina and James Brooner bought their dream home in Paradise.

“It's where we wanted to retire,” said Nina, who's 51 and learned her trade - the food service - at SRJC and the Santa Rosa catering company run by her mom, Pegi Ball.

Nina found much to like about Butte County. So did her sister, Nichole Maritzen, who lived nearly all her life in Sonoma County until she and her husband, Chris Maritzen, only weeks ago bought a home in Magalia, up the hill from Paradise.

“The scenery is gorgeous,” Nina said. “The wild animals ... deer in my yard. The people are very, very nice.”

She and her family especially liked the long and lovely, dog-friendly Paradise Memorial Trailway, and the food at their new town's Happy Garden Japanese restaurant.

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NEWS ACCOUNTS SAY the Happy Garden is gone. Nina said it's likely that both her and her sister's homes burned, too, but they don't know for sure.

“I think that's the hardest part,” said Nina, who's found a place in Wikiup where she and her family can stay.

Her horrifying story of fleeing Paradise mirrors so many from our firestorms of 13 months ago.

Last Thursday morning Nina's husband, a truck driver, was on the road. Their son Kyle, who's 28 and attended SRJC until the 2017 firestorms made living in Santa Rosa too difficult, needed a ride to classes at the Butte College satellite 15 miles away in Chico.

At about 7 a.m., Nina gave him a ride. “We saw some smoke and some yellow in the sky, but that wasn't unusual,” she said.

Minutes after she dropped Kyle off, he phoned her to say flames were closing in on Paradise. Back at home were Nina's other two children, 22-year-old Michelle, who has special needs, and Marcus, 24, two dogs and a cat.

She headed there, frantically trying to phone Marcus. When a call at last went through, Marcus told her a pine tree in the yard was on fire.

Nina told him to get his sister and the pets and start walking down the road, that she'd get there ASAP and pick them up.

Then came the terror.

“As I went up the hill it was mayhem,” Nina said. “It went to complete darkness; there was black smoke, flames everywhere.”

The road home was clogged with emergency vehicles, residents' cars streaming downhill. Nina had to find another route.

“I couldn't get to my kids!” she said. “I was driving against traffic, going up curbs.”

She felt herself on the verge of a heart attack when Marcus phoned her to say that a neighbor who was fleeing in a car stopped and picked up him, Michelle and the pets.

It was about four hours later that Nina and her three kids found each other in Chico. Marcus reported that as he and his sister headed away from their home “the whole neighborhood was burning up.”

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SO MANY FOLKS here in Sonoma County are familiar with the terrible limbo in which Nina and her sister and their families now dwell. They don't know if their homes still stand.

Nina, who mere days ago began to prepare for the first holidays in her new home, appreciates the informed caring that envelops her in Sonoma County as she yearns to go back and help rebuild Paradise.

You can contact columnist Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.