In the aftermath of the January wildfires in southern California, many residents returned to their properties to find little left but ash and debris. Among them was Derek Russell Jr., who had buried his father a month before the Eaton fire consumed his home.
Russell's father was a retired police officer and Army veteran.
As Russell searched through the rubble of his home, he focused on one deeply personal mission: recovering his father's police badge. It was one of only two keepsakes he hoped to find, the other being the folded American flag presented to him at his father's funeral. The flag had already been found. The badge, he feared, was lost for good.
All that changed during a chance encounter with Army Col. Sonny Avichal, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Emergency Recovery Office – Eaton. Avichal's team had just received approval to begin clearing debris at multifamily residences, including Russell's.
"Derek was explaining to me that his dad was a cop, and then he asked, ‘Are you guys going to be cleaning that place up?'" Avichal said. "I said, 'Yeah, actually, we're going to start next week.'"
Russell told Avichal about his father's missing badge and asked if the team would keep an eye out for it during the debris-clearing process.
The following day, Avichal contacted Will McGowan, a team lead with the corps' debris-removal contractor and explained the situation. McGowan relayed the request to his crew, and one of the workers offered a confident response: "Don't worry about it. By the end of today, we're going to find your badge."
They did so within the first hour.
"For that chance meeting and their schedule being just right, it was a lot of things that aligned," Avichal said.
Russell was stunned when the call came in.
"My first initial reaction was shock," he said. "I literally had no words because, up to that point, I thought it was a lost cause. I didn't think that it was going be able to be recovered."
Russell was driving on the freeway at the time and struggled to keep his emotions in check.
"I couldn't break down and cry," he said. "Probably that's what I felt like I wanted to do."
To Russell, the recovery of his father's badge felt almost spiritual, as though his dad was watching over him.
"It was a needle in a haystack," he said. "To find this, amid all that debris … It was my dad looking down. He helped them find it, for sure."
The badge, though charred, was still intact. But Russell didn't care about its condition; what mattered was what it stood for.
"It literally tells a story of survival," he said. "Despite the condition of the badge, it survived the fire — like me. I survived the fire."
Russell said the badge is now a symbol of endurance and survival for him and his community.
"Up until the fire, my home was a safe place," he said. "Everything in that home was safe until the fire came and took the safe place away. That badge means everything to me. It means survival. I'm a survivor, and that badge is a survivor. My community [is filled with] survivors."
Avichal credited the debris-removal crew with going above and beyond.
"All I did was just make the connection between Will and Derek," he said. "They get a lot of requests, and a lot of it is outside scope, but they definitely took the time to make sure that they talked to their crew and made all these different connections to show that, at the end of the day, it's the care that we give the public. It's about the survivor."
Russell is not sure what comes next, but he's keeping his head up.
"I'm so grateful for meeting Sonny when I met him because he fit the pieces into the puzzle and connected me with these people and got the job done," Russell said.
He also praised USACE for the larger mission they're carrying out in Altadena, California.
"They're doing an amazing job up there with the cleanup. Without the cleanup, there's no rebuilding," Russell said, adding, "We are very thankful for the Army Corps of Engineers."