LOS ANGELES — Felipe Ortega has spent 38 years — more than half of his life — working at Gladstones in Pacific Palisades. He started as a busboy and worked his way to bartender and maintenance worker. But for the foreseeable future, the 64-year-old is out of a job.

A week after flames damaged the restaurant and destroyed huge swaths of the oceanside area, Gladstones remained shuttered and inaccessible to the public as the Palisades fire continued to rage.

At the same time, Ortega worried about next month’s rent for his home in Mar Vista. He has bills due, particularly medical bills from his 11-year-old daughter’s bout with appendicitis a few months ago. Those costs have already burrowed through much of the savings he socked away.

“What are we going to do, papi?” his daughter asked him the other day.

He tried to reassure her. But Ortega doesn’t really know.

Ortega is one of thousands of workers throughout the L.A. region who are the cornerstone of the restaurant industry. Now, likely hundreds find themselves struggling in the aftermath of the Palisades and Eaton fires. Many have lost their jobs and main source of income after restaurants or cafes were damaged or destroyed by the fires. Some workers have also lost their homes.

“These are the people who make restaurants hum. They are the heart of restaurants,” said Alycia Harshfield, president of the California Restaurant Foundation, a nonprofit organization that is helping food and beverage workers affected by the L.A. fires with grants.

In response, several restaurant operators and aid organizations have launched fundraisers and GoFundMe accounts for employees.

As of 11 a.m. Wednesday, Gladstones’ GoFundMe had raised a little more than $21,000 of its $250,000 goal.

The restaurant, founded by former Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan more than 50 years ago, is one of very few structures that remain standing after flames leveled much of the immediate area. The restaurant sustained some damage, but its future remains unclear.

“We have many challenges in our near future but none more pressing than seeing that the staff that we and our patrons rely on receives funds to be able to keep their lives and families afloat for the next two months while we work hard to restore life back to the Palisades,” Gladstones’ GoFundMe page states.

Ortega, one of the longest serving workers at the restaurant, said he doesn’t know much about the fundraising efforts but says he’s hopeful the restaurant will reopen. “Gladstones is my home,” he said.

About four miles west in Malibu, the fire destroyed Moonshadows — a more than 40-year-old landmark restaurant on the coast.

Wilfredo Quinteros, a 55-year-old food runner at Moonshadows, choked up when he spoke about the fire leveling the restaurant.

“I’ve lost my identity,” he said. Quinteros, who worked for 23 years at the restaurant, said he spent more time at work than at his home in Baldwin Hills.

Some of his best memories have been at Moonstones, most of them the crimson sunsets from the open-air dining room facing the Pacific Ocean.

Quinteros cried when he talked about the restaurant possibly never reopening. “It’s difficult for me to talk about this,” he said. “It hurts.”

Quinteros said he also worried about paying his bills and making rent for the apartment he shares with his partner and 13-year-old grandchild. He’s the sole breadwinner.

He said he hopes Moonshadows’ operators will offer him a job at its sister establishment, the Sunset restaurant in Malibu. But he’s not betting on it.

He’s already hunting for a new job, calling friends and colleagues he knows about possible openings.

“I know something good will happen. I’m a good worker,” Quinteros said. “I’ll work doing anything. It doesn’t matter to me as long as it’s honest work.”

Community connections lost

Across the county, roughly half a dozen restaurants in Altadena were razed by the Eaton fire, and many are trying to raise money for their employees.

When Matthew Schodorf attempted to check on his Altadena coffee shop Café de Leche on Jan. 8, he and his family drove through “fire raining down in the streets.” The Eaton blaze destroyed the Altadena location of Café de Leche, and with it, the jobs of six employees — the backbone of the local coffee chain’s most successful branch and what made it a neighborhood hub.

“(Customers) were drawn by our people, by our employees — their connection to all of the guests and knowing all their dogs’ names and their kids’ names and how they’re doing at work and their vacations,” Schodorf said. “It was because of our employees that it was that magical place. They looked forward to seeing those faces behind the counter every day. They’re really good people, they’re really nice people, and they also love coffee.”

All six Altadena employees were baristas, including one store manager.

Since the fire, he and his wife, co-owner Anya Schodorf, managed to place multiple Altadena employees in shifts at their other cafe locations, though some have chosen to leave the company — and the field entirely — after the fire.

“A couple of our people lost their homes, and I would say a lot of them were displaced,” Matthew Schodorf said. “Even if their homes are still there, they maybe can’t go back to it.”

The owners turned to GoFundMe to help and said that all donations will be split evenly between Altadena’s former six employees to help cover “rent, medical bills, transportation or other necessities.”

While some of the contributions have been as generous as $500, many of the donations arrive in $5, $10 and $20 increments, adding up to more than $20,000 as of Tuesday afternoon — a tribute, Matthew Schodorf believes, to their cafe’s community spirit.

“It’s mind blowing,” he said. “It’s hundreds of people.”

The GoFundMe for community-minded pizzeria Side Pie aids owner Kevin Hockin along with 14 employees, while the family behind neighborhood institution Fox’s restaurant started one to distribute funds to its indefinitely unemployed 15 staff members.

Multiple staffers of Amara Kitchen’s Altadena cafe have been displaced by the Eaton fire; their GoFundMe could help offset the cost of new housing accommodations as well as “furloughs or significant reductions in hours due to the immediate loss of work and revenue,” according to the fundraiser’s page. Amara Kitchen also operates a location in Highland Park.

Gourmet corner store Minik Market’s fundraiser will pay its out-of-work staff and ensure the shop’s vendors are also paid.

Many service-industry workers who lost their homes might still have jobs, but they’re spending hours navigating new housing, insurance systems and transportation, which can cut into their work shifts.

A manager at Frogtown taqueria Salazar started a campaign for busperson Jaime Pacheco, whose home and “everything he owns” burned in the Eaton fire. A former neighbor launched one for Erich Martinez, a cook at Echo Park izakaya Tsubaki. Layn Beggs was bartending at downtown whiskey destination Seven Grand when she learned of the evacuation order for her home in Altadena.

In 2018, chef Travis Hayden purchased his home in the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates park for its convenience to both the beach and Westside restaurants such as his former employer, Rustic Canyon. Most of his neighbors were elderly, retired or middle-to-lower income; last week, all of their homes were destroyed in the Palisades fire.

Hayden was cooking at Bar Etoile in Melrose Hill when he heard the fire was headed toward his mobile-home community along PCH. Then he began receiving texts from neighbors that the park was ablaze. So far across town, he stayed on the line cooking; he would never make it there in time.

He found almost nothing in the rubble, but his great-grandfather’s large stone mortar and pestle was still intact — albeit cracked from the fire’s heat.

Hayden’s own GoFundMe is full of the names of industry friends, childhood schoolmates, total strangers and people from around the world.

“It was incredibly moving to see how the community banded together to support those in need,” Hayden said, “and it’s not just for me.”

‘We have no work’

On the morning the Palisades fire broke out, Jose Lopez, a 56-year-old cook who lives near Culver City, was working a shift at the Reel Inn in Malibu.

Lopez, who has worked at the iconic seafood spot for 32 years, said he didn’t think much of the fire, at first. It was still miles away from the restaurant, he reasoned.

But by noon, a manager told Lopez and the other workers to clean up and get ready to leave. Around 3 p.m. Lopez and three other workers closed up the restaurant.

The buses had stopped running in that area so he gave his colleagues a ride to Santa Monica. It took them about two hours just to get there.

By the time he made it home around 6 p.m., he’d gotten word the restaurant had caught fire. His mind raced to all the hours he’d spent at the Reel Inn. All the memories. All the friendships. He and his colleagues had also lost their livelihoods.

“From one day to another, we have no work,” he said.

Lopez, the oldest and one of the most senior employees, told his colleagues to take heart and that they’ll all be OK. He said he feels for restaurant owners Andy and Teddy Leonard.

“They were always there when we needed something,” he said. “They never abandoned us.”

The Reel Inn is now running its own GoFundMe for unemployed staff.

Lopez says hopes to land a job soon. He has rent due and not much in the way of savings. Still, he said, if the Reel Inn reopens, he wants to return.

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