Brian McShea and Stephanie Raynor rolled through the rubble where her Altadena house once stopped to see what they could save the destructive fire of Eaton. While Raynor looked for any element that survived the fire, McShea was looking for a specific element that hoped he was still intact.
Through the rubble that were the remains of the material elements that the couple once had, McShea miraculously found what he was looking for: the engagement ring he was going to use to propose to Raynor.
“My first reaction was like, ‘Oh, look, here is’,” he recalled.
To be specific, McShea found the ring under his guitar strings. At that same moment, McShea decided to marry his girlfriend.
“You think how much this pressure, all this perfection you want at the time you propose,” he said. “I found it, and it’s like, ‘here is. Do you want to marry with me? ‘”
The tender moment made Raynor cry, he said.
“I cried, I was crying,” he said. “I had my glasses with the glasses on the top and like, completely tarnished. Then, I simply went and like that I would give him a big hug and obviously said yes. “
To commemorate the moment that life changed, the couple asked a woman to take her photo. Before the ring stays permanently on Raynor’s finger, the couple took it to clean up in the jeweler where McShea bought it.
While the couple hopes to plan their wedding, they are also looking for reconstruction.
“Los Angeles has really been supporting Altadena and all the communities affected by fire,” McShea said. “And I hope, you know, be prepared to tie in the long term and we can build Altadena again. And yes, we can spend some married years under the mountains. “