
Gray Fire Help for Trish Karavitis
Donation protected
Hi, my name is Laura and I'm the daughter of Charlie and Trish Karavitis, who had made Medical Lake, Washington their home for almost forty years until Charlie passed away in 2021. If you know the area, we live just south of the city limits right next to the Bible Camp. My dad was an ML police officer in the 1980's and my brother and I both went to Medical Lake schools our whole life and graduated from MLHS. We made our whole lives out there on that beautiful marshland just south of Ring Lake and my mom still lived there until the Gray Fire that began on Friday, August 18th. We have discovered that the fire took everything-- including my dad's dog Lucy, who was home in her kennel while my mom was at work in Spokane.
My mother, brother, and I are sick with grief. While we count our blessings that mom was away from the house, we feel devastated that we could not get in to save Lucy by the time the evacuation started. My mom only had the clothes on her back and now all the tangible assets of her and my father's life together are ash.
Even though we know in our hearts that "it's just stuff" we lost so many things that will never be able to be replaced. My grandmother's quilts, my father's urn, beautiful family heirlooms that comforted us and reminded us of wonderful memories. My brother and I, being on the older side of the Millennial generation, only had hard copies of most of our baby pictures and school photos so those are gone as well. My mom lost everything in my dad's shop too, including his grandfather's boat and a lot of woodworking equipment.
When my dad was alive he would talk openly about how his children and the stewardship of that wetland were the only legacies he had to leave the world. He took such pride in maintaining the land and believed so very deeply in its conservation as a wildlife habitat. He liked fixing things in the house himself, puttering in his shop, plowing the road in the winter, fencing in the summer, and being outside listening to the ducks chatter on the marsh. Honestly, the farm meant so much to us all it feels like losing him all over again. Dad used to gesture out across the marsh and say he only ever truly knew God on that farm. I would hear him say hundreds of times over the course of my life that he belonged "to the Church of the Wide Open Spaces" and now, less than three years after he's gone, our family's church has burned. They had insurance and we are trying not to be in despair, but insurance doesn't appear immediately and won't meet my mom's full financial need to get a new home in these post-pandemic economic conditions. This fundraiser will hopefully offset costs and make up for any shortfalls in the process of moving on.
If your spirit calls you to help in a different way, it would mean a lot to us if you supported any of the efforts to save or house animals that did survive the fire in Lucy's honor and memory. Great places are SCRAPS, Spokanimal, or the Spokane Humane Society.
Organizer
Laura Karavitis
Organizer
Medical Lake, WA