Support Dorna's Recovery from Fire Loss

On the night of January 7, 2025, our dear friend and colleague, Dorna, fled the Eaton fire with minutes' notice, taking only her two cats, Téo and Molly, her passport, and her laptop. Within hours, fire consumed her home. As has happened to so many others in S. California this sad January 2025, her house in Altadena and all its contents burnt to ash. She lost her clothes, kitchen implements, furniture, art by artist friends, family heirlooms from Iran, supplies for daily living: all are gone.

Dorna was massively underinsured. Her home insurance will also not cover any of her lost personal belongings. Her house was her only capital.

Since becoming a lawyer in 2022, Dorna has devoted herself to public defense, trying to help those most in need to obtain justice. She had moved back to Los Angeles in September after completing a two-year fellowship in Albuquerque where she represented indigent clients charged with federal offenses. She treated all her clients with deep respect and fought for them fiercely.

Dorna has been reluctant to let us do a gofundme page for her, but we have strongarmed her into it. She wants, at this stage of her life, to help others, not ask for aid for herself. But we, her friends, mindful of the enormity of the challenges confronting her as she rebuilds her life, are reaching out on her behalf.

Dorna is not only a new-ish lawyer but a translator and interpreter from French and Farsi. She has been a court interpreter since 2003, as well as interpreter to filmmakers, one being Abbas Kiarostami, and translator of written works including by novelist Michel Houellebecq.

Dorna bought the house at 430 Wapello in 2013 from 91-year-old Mr. Littlejohn who had built it in 1949. The wooden midcentury house was luminous with the golden light that poured through its many windows. It looked out onto a lush and idyllic garden. She fell in love with the garden, the giant cedar in front, the huge beautiful avocado tree in the back and the lemon and orange trees. The mature camelias bloomed pink, white, and red in early spring. Over the last twelve years Dorna planted so much in the garden and it was a little paradise of fruit trees and flowers, herbs and plants. That now vanished house was such a magical and well-loved home, and Dorna is desolated it is gone.

We love Dorna for her humanism, intelligence, sense of duty to others, strength, tenderheartedness, affectionate nature, sense of humor, imagination, empathy and moral courage. She is a citizen of the world in the truest sense, multi-lingual, politically aware, curious about everyone, including plants and animals. Please help her get back on her feet if you can.

If you wish to know who has authored and posted this request

on Dorna's behalf:

We are Carol Marion, a veteran federal public defense lawyer (retired) and Amy Gerstler, a literary writer and journalist. You can Google us if you want to know more. Carol and Dorna met while Dorna was doing her Federal Defender Fellowship in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Amy has known Dorna for nearly 20 years. Carol lives in New Mexico and Amy is a longtime Los Angelino, having lived in LA since college. We are both close friends of Dorna's and adamant about doing what we can to help her recover from this catastrophic loss. Whatever monies this gofundme effort raises for Dorna will be spent on replacing essential possessions that perished in the fire, and on rent and other basic living expenses (utilities and other bills) so she can remain solvent and have some place to live in Los Angeles over the course of the next year to six months. She needs help sustaining herself and securing a place to live. That is what this campaign is all about.