My name is Alisa (Fiksdal) Warshawski. And with my sister, Krystal Fiksdal, we are creating this fund for our mom and sister.

On January 7, 2025, our family home in Pacific Palisades – and everything in it – burned to the ground.

We all had just spent Christmas as a family in this home. It is unimaginable that this would be our last Christmas in our beloved home.

Helena has called the Palisades home since 1978. My parents bought the house to raise their young family in a safe and quiet town outside of LA. It was full of families, and the community welcomed us. We made friends and knocked on each other’s doors when we wanted to play.

Erika has been a dog walker and dog sitter living with my mom in the Palisades. It has been a great and hopeful job for a mom raising a seven year old daughter after moving back home after a job loss.

Now following the Palisades fire, there’s no hope to be found anywhere. Our mom and Erika along with her daughter lived in that house together and have no place to go and no source of income. My mom is retired, and the house was her retirement. Erika’s sole source of income was a dog walking and dog sitting business, Wagmi & Co., that served almost exclusively Palisades clients. Erika loved her job and the community - because that’s the kind of community it was. But all of those animals are gone from the area now. And all of their people. No clients - no income. It’s uphill battle to restart, again.

While they had property insurance, they have limited insurance on the house since insurance companies pulled out of Southern California and we don't know if it will be sufficient to get back on our feet in the upcoming days. My niece’s elementary school (Marquez Charter Elementary) has only one building remaining – all of the classrooms have burned and the school is believed to be a total loss. We don’t yet know where she will go to school and my family hasn’t yet told her the whole truth – that they have lost everything. They have the clothes on their back, and a few donations from friends. They’re living in a small apartment that may soon be evacuated as the fires continue to ravage Los Angeles County. 

It is unfathomable that our mom won’t be able to live out her life in the house she loved, or any of the belongings she collected over a lifetime. It is unfathomable to us that we won’t have the house that our mom had always intended to be a place where we could “come home.”

The funds will be used for:

***All funds received will go to non-disaster related expenses.***

Please help and then share this GoFundMe far and wide.