Last year, it was only one day after Thanksgiving when Brooke Owen’s Redondo Beach home was engulfed in flames. She and her daughter Meghan lost everything in the blaze.

“At first i said, ‘Oh they’re fixing it. I can move back in. It’ll be great.’ But, we don’t really want to move back in. It’s too hard,” Owens said.

One year later, the home is surrounded by construction fencing and officials still do not know what caused the fire. Owens said it can be a hard sight to walk by.

 

 

“I see the house every day, I mean all the time. I walk by it to come to work,” Owens said.

Owens has owned Brooke’s Flowers, a flower shop in Redondo Beach, for the last three years. The shop was also her safe place after the fire. She didn’t have any insurance on her rental. Luckily, the community helped her business bloom.

“After things calmed down, when you start thinking, 'What am I going to do? What are we going to do? Where are we going to live?' We have no home. We don’t really have any money. And we didn’t even have to think about it because in two days, a GoFundMe was started and raised almost $20,000,” Owens said.

Normally, she would be planning her third Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless at her shop. But this year, her situation forced her to think twice.

“This is a tough one for me. I really enjoy doing this and because of the fire it was suggested by a lot of people that I should not do it. So out of respect, I decided not to do it,” Owens said.

She said she had received so much support from the community, she needed to find a way to give back despite her long list of orders. Instead, this year, she’s planning to give back with flowers.

“I usually have a lot of extra flowers, you know a few. So I might as well,” Owens said.

Owens said she will donate 12 to 20 flowered vases to a local hospital this Thanksgiving. It’s just her way of extending a hand when so many reached out to her.