For days, Miva Wheatley Friedli’s family and friends held onto the hope that she was lost somewhere and not at home when the Eaton fire ripped through Altadena.
The 86-year-old grandmother often spoke of faith and lamented about life in Costa Rica, where she was born.
She was one of 15 children, married at 17 in a civil ceremony and arrived in California following in her older brother’s footsteps when she was an adult. She went on to raise three boys at her home on Mariposa Street in Altadena and later remarried and became a widow later in life.
But in the days following the fire nothing remained of the home. Her nephew Juan Gonzalez found a pile of debris and her front gate that was still locked.
She had Parkinson’s disease, walked with a slight tremor and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department listed her as suffering from dementia in a missing person’s bulletin.
Family and friends shared her photo on social media asking for help in the hope that she was unable to recall her name and was lost in a shelter or a hospital.
Then on Jan. 15, two days before her birthday, search and rescue cadaver dogs found human remains at the home and notified the family.
“I was hoping, praying, doing everything that she would be found, because I could not come to grips to the alternative option,” Carol Wheatley said about her older sister.
Relatives described Friedli as a devout Christian, an independent and rambunctious woman who worked in the medical field and later in child care.
“She always had a strong personality, but under her sometimes stearn exterior was a very sweet and loving human being,” her sister said.
Gonzalez remembers spending time as a child with his cousins at Friedli’s home.
He and his brother and cousins would pile into his uncle’s station wagon and made their way to downtown Los Angeles, where the family would go shopping.
“She would always buy us strawberry milk,” Gonzalez said with a laugh.
He remembers her smile and warmth, how she treated him as her own child, because his mother worked so much.
His aunt Miva, he affectionately says, would take him to church on Sundays and he remembers at 7 or 8 years old falling asleep in the pews during those Baptist sermons.
“A lot of good times back when I was younger,” Gonzalez said.
The immense grief over her death is underscored with questions about how Friedli died in her home. Several relatives lost their homes in the fire, including 83-year-old Myrin Wheatley Brown, Friedli’s sister.
On the morning after the home was destroyed she wore a face mask as her adult children searched through the ash and debris of the home where the family has lived for more than 50 years.
“Our aunt is missing,” the family said about Friedli.
Myrin Wheatley Brown nodded and her husband, Frank Brown, said, “Our dear sister is missing.”
The Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office still lists the human remains found at the approximate location where Friedli lived as an unidentified Jane Doe. A DNA test is being done to confirm the identity, according to family.
Sheila Wheatley joined the family when she married Friedli’s nephew Victor Wheatley.
She remembers several years ago driving home and spotting Friedli, who was a widow and no longer drove herself, walking up a steep hill to her home in Altadena.
She stopped and offered her a ride.
“She told me, ‘No, thank you. I could use the exercise,’ ” Sheila Wheatley said.
Friedli took her phone number and Sheila Wheatley joined the small group of relatives whom Friedli allowed into her inner orbit, helping her pay bills or make phone calls.
Relatives checked in on her regularly and while Friedli grew reclusive in her later years, she was still grateful for their help and company.
“She was thankful to God for the help,” said Sheila Wheatley, who views her time with Friedli as a reminder to visit family while you still have the chance, even if they are withdrawn.
“She was a beautiful soul, very strong, very resilient,” she said.
Friedli’s younger sister Carol Wheatley wants people to remember her sister as a mother, sibling and daughter. The two sisters lost track of each other when Friedli moved to the United States but reconnected years later and frequently kept in touch.
“She was always quoting from the Bible and she always would find something positive to say, trying to uplift you,” Carol Wheatley said.
Even when Carol Wheatley might say something negative, her sister would shoot back, “ ‘We are very thankful to the Lord.’ She was always reminding us,” Carol Wheatley said. “Her faith was strong.”
