Help Hayley, a Costume Designer & Artist, restart after fire

Hello, my name is Ana Calderon, I live in Eagle Rock/Glassell Park area and I'm helping my friend Hayley McCune raise funds after losing everything she ever had in the Palisades fire.

Hayley is a costume designer (member of the CDG 892 Union). She was working on a small job on set the morning the fires broke out and got word there was a fire nearing her apartment midday- within hours, the fire-cyclone had taken over the PCH and her home was engulfed. She got confirmation when she saw her home burn live on TV (the news stations were HQ’d a couple blocks from her apartment, so she had a front row to watch it burn to the ground).

Sadly, Hayley did NOT have renter's insurance.

Being raised in rural Wisconsin, Hayley has always fought for what she has accomplished in LA., and though she lived near the beach in her dream apartment, she paid a very humble rent that she could afford due to a kind-hearted landlord ($ comparable to that of her previous Koreatown studio apartment). This place was truly a unicorn.

Last week, Hayley lost everything, and we mean EVERYTHING. She never got a chance to evacuate, so she literally left with only the work clothes on her back. Beyond losing her furniture, home goods, electronics, birth certificates/passport and work kits she also lost irreplaceable antiques, vintage items, memorabilia from her family and friends who have passed and artwork she painstakingly created, including a hand-woven piece she recently finished (made from Malibu driftwood) that took her over a year to make and was actually in the process of being used to raise funds for the Malibu fires from a few months ago.

Hayley, being the kind and always gracious and generous person that she is, helped lead a donation drive this past week, helping other women and children in accessing relief, even as she grieved her own loss.

We want to help her restart her life and fund the mounting unexpected expenses. She also needs help recreating her costumer kit so she can get back to work. All of these things are exorbitantly expensive when starting from scratch and she cannot do it alone.

Hayley wouldn't let us set up a GoFundMe for her all week, even though we all begged. In the immediate aftermath, we urged her to at least share a peer-to-peer pay app account so those close to her could lend a hand. But now, finally, she has seen the incredible reach this platform has had in helping everyone affected by these horrific fires, and has agreed to allow us to create this GoFundMe as a way for our extended communities to lend a hand during this difficult and heartbreaking time.

Hayley has been deeply moved by the outpouring of kindness and has expressed so much gratitude and overwhelming appreciation for the support she’s received thus far.

That said, there is still a very long road to recovery for Hayley and thousands more of our Angeleno friends.

Please donate anything you can and support our girl. Thank you.

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Words from Hayley's Original IG post after watching the newscaster report live while standing right in front of her burning home....

"All my life I dreamed of living in a beach shack in Malibu. Long before I was old enough to understand that the price point of the land would not produce a shack. But that was my dream. When I moved to LA at 21, I drove down PCH and I laid my eyes on -it-. It was a dark, rough wood old building, standing apart from all of the bright white and cream buildings surrounding it. I wanted to stop, but I was kind of scared it housed a cult! Every time I drove by it for the next 15 years, I always slowed down just a little bit, to glance at the building that was just -me-. Last February, on a whim, I googled ‘Malibu studio for rent’, a familiar photo popped up! I was across the Malibu Mountains, but I made the trip immediately. They showed it to me before telling me it was a photo studio and I could not live there. I was crushed, but then the realtor gave me a long look at quietly said, “The land lady has a two bedroom upstairs with a wrap around balcony that she won’t rent unless she meets someone perfect for it. I think she might like you.” I had a call with Sue right then and there and was awarded my dream house. For ten months I woke up under the arms of my fiddle leaf fig I’d raised from near death into a ceiling scraping beauty. Every night I fell asleep to the sound of waves crashing and thanked God for my life. I was blessed to possess my dream, if only briefly. I will cherish that time, and look back with gratitude. I will remember all of my possessions with warmth and be thankful for the life I built. Somehow I knew I had an appointment with that place for 15 years. I know I was where I was meant to be. I am grateful and honored to have had everything I did, and it helps me accept that today marks the end of my life as I know it.

I’m safe. I know that’s what’s important. Yesterday I left for work at 8 am with an empty car and the clothes on my back. PCH was closed before I even knew what was happening. This is my dream home today. I’ve lost everything I’ve ever acquired. I will miss a lot of it, but I’m still grateful for the time I had, living in the dream I’d created. -Hayley"