Out of the Ashes

Kitty Erkkila Cahalan ’92 moved to Pasadena, California, in 1993 and never looked back. She met her husband there, where they both work at the California Institute of Technology, and they raised their kids there, volunteering with the PTA, sitting on nonprofit boards, and becoming deeply rooted in their community.

“It’s a small enough city, you can make an impact and feel needed,” she says. Cahalan lived in Pasadena during the 1993 Eaton Canyon fire but had never experienced more than smoke until the Eaton Fire of January 2025 came within a mile of her home, forcing her family to evacuate and devastating the neighboring town of Altadena.

“It’s awful to be in a community that’s burned, and a million times worse to have lost everything,” Cahalan says. She figures she knows at least 100 families who suffered loss.

At the time, Cahalan was part of Leadership Pasadena, a community network and training program. Wanting to do something to support the community, she worked with other participants to launch Mariposa Night in July 2025, a gathering where speakers shared stories about Altadena to a community audience of more than 750 in Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium.

A second event was held for the business community in March. Stories have ranged from a childhood memory of sneaking into the Rose Bowl to see Stevie Wonder to discovering community in a public school.

“It’s a sharing of grief and of memory,” she says. “The stories are really heart-wrenching, but they are so necessary. Nobody in the audience didn’t go through it, too.”

Although Cahalan sees an eventual sunset to the event series as the community rebuilds, she hopes to host more events — all shared to YouTube — in the meantime.

“Let’s keep telling Altadena’s stories and not forget what the community was,” she says.

@mariposanight.altadena