Layla Hawkins had less than 10 minutes to pack up her cherished belongings before a wildfire on Jan. 7, 2025 took her beloved home of four decades. It left behind only a treasured basketball hoop that belonged to her late husband, Los Angeles sports star Tommy Hawkins, a motivation for the grieving homeowner to rebuild again in his honor.
Layla Hawkins is one of the thousands who were displaced by the Pacific Palisades fire that swept through the Los Angeles neighborhood, destroying some 6,800 homes, businesses and structures in one of the largest and most expensive disasters in California history. The blaze left 12 people dead.
Now, almost two years after the fires, Layla Hawkins is on the road to fulfilling her goal in memory of her late husband, thanks in part to nonprofit Habitat for Humanity, whose volunteers from its ReBUILD LA initiative are helping her pick up the pieces. She tells TODAY.com that she is “forever grateful.”
Hawkins says that seeing people come together to help her is “like having an army of relatives surrounding you and giving you hope, love and generous hugs. That’s priceless.”
The Palisades fire — in addition to the Eaton fire that burned simultaneously on the opposite end of Los Angeles, claiming the lives of 19 people and destroying 9,418 homes and other buildings — was an eye-opening experience for Hawkins. That day, she left her home with her husband’s ashes in hand and dog Shiloh. She says she could feel the heat from the fire.
“I lived in Malibu for 40 years. I had gone through quite a few fires and we have always been ready to go and get everything ready and come back,” Hawkins says. “That day, it was something out of a movie script. We only had about eight minutes to vacate and leave.”
She said she hoped evacuating would be similar to her past experiences in which she’d eventually return to see her home still standing. She wasn’t so lucky.
“I could see the fires viciously going crazy, way out of control. And I said to myself, and I said to my home, ‘I will see you in a few hours, like all the other times. Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,’” she recalls. “And as I stopped for just some reason, out of the blue, I looked back. I (had) a lump in my throat and I just knew that I would never see my home again.”
When she arrived back on her property later on, she hesitated before stepping out of her car, she recalls. Little remained of her home, she says.
However, a moment of optimism filled her heavy heart after she saw a blue starfish bank where she and her husband would share love notes with each other, she adds.
“I looked in that massive destruction, and I saw that little starfish, blue, deep blue, just staring at me,” she says. “I just went over there, and I remember I kneeled, and I said, ‘Tommy.’”
Even more moving, Hawkins says, was the discovery that her husband’s basketball hoop had survived the fire. Tommy Hawkins had a 10-year NBA career and played for the Los Angeles Lakers for six seasons, as well as with the Cincinnati Royals for four. He also worked with the Los Angeles Dodgers as vice president of communications.
“I remember I walked over and I gave it a big hug,” she says. “I hugged it so tight because I was hugging my home. I was hugging Tommy.”
From that moment, she made a promise to her late husband that she would return and rebuild their home.
Rebuilding efforts have been difficult, she says, but she made inroads on that promise after she received an email from Habitat for Humanity, informing her that they would help her reconstruct. She was shocked, she says, and read the email over and over to make sure it was real.
“It took me a few hours to actually settle down and write a letter to them. And from that day on, they have been with me every step,” she says, adding that they’ve helped with paperwork, permits and more.
Most recently, Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles held a four-day Pacific Palisades Community Build effort, from Sept. 23–26, during which Hawkins saw hundreds of volunteers working on her home as well as that of others. The group’s wall-framing and landscaping efforts, she says, brought a sense of community back to the destroyed land.
“I just (have) this feeling that I’m going to have the biggest Christmas tree up in my home by Christmastime,” she says with a laugh, adding that Habitat’s help has made her smile once again.
The expected completion date for Hawkins’ home is June 2027, pending weather.
