Maribel Medina was raised in a California farmworker family, the first of them to reach a college classroom. Two Berkeley degrees and a Harvard master’s later, she became a lawyer. The Eaton Fire survivors she is now trying to reach are the family she came from.
A year and a half after the fire destroyed more than 9,400 structures in Altadena, Medina — now an attorney with the wildfire coalition LA Fire Justice — is trying to reach the Latino survivors least likely to ask whether they are owed money.
A UCLA analysis found Latinos made up 27 percent of the people living in the burn area, yet they remain, by the coalition’s account, among the least likely to come forward.
The reasons are rarely simple, Medina said: not knowing the law, fear of drawing attention, and a mistaken belief that taking insurance or federal aid forecloses a claim.
It is a gap she says she recognized long before she had a profession to name it.
“My family suffered tragedies growing up, and we had no idea how to contact an attorney,” she wrote in response to questions.
Her family did not understand, she added, that some lawyers work on contingency — paid only from a settlement, with nothing owed up front.
Her advice now is plain, and, she acknowledged, harder than it sounds.
“Speak to an attorney. I know that sounds simple, but for many people in this community, it is not,” she wrote. “Many individuals have never met a lawyer in their life.”
Taking aid does not bar a claim, she added: “Receiving insurance proceeds or FEMA assistance does not disqualify you.”
The coalition has set up consultation hours in Spanish and English.
Survivors do have more than one option.
Southern California Edison, which has called its equipment a leading theory in the fire’s cause while denying negligence, runs a voluntary program that pays claimants who agree not to sue. Medina, whose coalition is suing the utility, pointed to a deadline: under California law, such claims generally must be filed within two years, which for the Eaton Fire means January 2027.
“Seven months will arrive before families realize it,” she wrote. “The window is closing.”
The coalition’s outreach centered on a May 28 event in Pasadena it called “No Te Hemos Olvidado” — “we have not forgotten you.”
Asked what she wanted survivors to take from it, Medina returned, as she did more than once, to the same line: “Do it for your children. Do it for your grandchildren.”
