Minnie Mouse ears helped a teacher connect with her kindergartners. The Palisades fire incinerated her collection
In the early, chaotic days of the COVID-19 pandemic, transitional-kindergarten teacher Elizabeth Lam despaired.
She saw distracted faces when she gazed across the virtual divide to her students learning at home.
So she offered comfort.
Lam donned a set of Minnie Mouse ears. Four-year-old students who might struggle with 2+2 or writing their names could focus on M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E.
"They became curious and engaged," Lam said. "And they were ready to learn."
Lam become synonymous with the ears and was dubbed the "Disney teacher" on campus. She collected and kept more than 30 pairs in her classroom. Some were purchased to mark personal milestones, such as completing her 200th half marathon; others were gifted by students.
On Jan. 7, they were all incinerated, along with most of Palisades Charter Elementary School, by the Palisades fire.
As the blaze bore down on her campus, Lam initially tried to save a few pairs of ears, but she ultimately set them aside in order to hold the hands of her most frightened students, some frozen in fear, as they evacuated the school.
The historic fire killed at least 12 Pacific Palisades residents, burned 23,448 acres and destroyed more than 6,800 structures.
Read more: Palisades and Eaton fires now 100% contained. But a long road to recovery looms
Palisades Charter Elementary students, teachers and staff relocated to Brentwood Science Magnet.
Along with structures, the fire also took small things, like the Minnie ears and the memories they evoked.
There was the Little Mermaid pair — two purple seashells with a turquoise bow in between that mimicked Ariel's tail. They were gifted by one of Lam's former students, who bought them during a family summer trip to DisneySea theme park in Tokyo.
"These were extra special because she bought herself a matching set of ears so we could be twins," Lam said.
A few years earlier, a parent purchased a set of ears in traditional black as a Christmas gift for Lam. The parent handed a white marker to her daughter, a student in Lam's class.
The child wrote on the ears: "Mrs. Lam, I love you."
The teacher wore the headpiece for years. That student occasionally popped by her class to examine how her handwriting, but not her sentiment, had changed.
Lam "oozes Disney magic" in her classroom, often wearing those Minnie ears while strolling through the halls, said Palisades Charter Principal Juliet Herman.
"She's happy and patient all the time, like Disney characters," Herman said. "Students and parents feel like they're at their second home in her classroom."
Herman said that was evident Jan. 13, the first day Palisades Charter returned to in-person instruction in Brentwood.
That morning, 17 of Lam's 19 students were present despite the fire having displaced 13 of them.
"That speaks volumes to the trust parents have in her," the principal said.
For Lam, friendships, success and milestones have been measured in Minnie ears.
She treasured a set she purchased after the completion of the Disney Halloween Half Marathon last fall, her 200th such competition.
They were a plain set of black vinyl ears, but she and her son waited seven hours for a California Adventure designer to customize and dry them before they could be worn.
The employee wrote "runDisney Mom" on one ear and "200th half marathon" on the other. Three Disney balloons were drawn to represent her family, along with Disney fireworks.
Evan Lam, who aspires to study medicine at UC Irvine, often acts as his mom's Disney ears style arbiter.
Read more: L.A. Unified schools burned in Palisades fire hit milestone in their $600 million rebuild
The 17-year-old's amused advice: "Wear something that doesn't look bad."
The duo visit Disneyland nearly every Saturday, arriving at the park around noon for lunch at a favorite restaurant such as the Hearthstone Lounge at Disney's Grand Californian Hotel or the Lamplight Lounge at Pixar Pier.
Lam became a Disney fan at age 5, when she and her mother moved from New Hampshire to Santa Barbara to live with her grandmother. The trio visited Disneyland annually. Cinderella was Lam's favorite character.
But she said she hadn't considered buying an annual pass until her son was born.
"It's an experience I wanted to share," Lam said.
Evan was with his mother at the park when she purchased what seemed like an innocuous accessory, a pair of Winnie-the-Pooh ears to add to her headband.
Out of Lam's Disney ears she kept at school, they were the only pair that survived the fire. They just happened to be atop her head Jan. 7.
"My kids got used to seeing my ears during COVID," so they expected to see them once they returned to campus, she said. "Ever since then, my students know they could find Mrs. Lam by her ears."
On Jan. 6, Lam and Palisades Charter returned to instruction after a three-week winter break. She brought along a bag of 30-plus mouse ears to class. Individual students would select which set would be worn each week; several were new to them.
The next day, the winds were fierce and Lam, her students and her teaching assistant spent recess and lunch inside.
Investigators believe the Palisades fire ignited around 10:30 a.m. Jan. 7 near a popular hiking trail just southeast of Palisades Drive. The flames spread rapidly. By noon, Topanga Canyon Boulevard and areas west of Merrimac Road had been evacuated. The fire consumed 772 acres by 2:11 p.m., eventually torching Topanga Canyon State Park. By 6:17 p.m., it had become an unstoppable force, devouring nearly 3,000 acres.
Around that same time, the Eaton fire in Altadena had started, eventually killing 18 people, burning 14,021 acres and razing more than 9,400 structures in and around Altadena and Pasadena.
Around 11 that morning at Palisades Charter, flames were inching closer, and parents were told the school was being evacuated.
Fourteen of the 18 students in Lam's class that day were picked up by noon, before buses arrived to whisk everyone else away.
Lam, who had stayed in class with the last four students, tucked her laptop, lunch and several pairs of ears underneath her arms and opened the door, intent on leading her kids to the buses. But they remained paralyzed with fear, the flames providing the brightest bursts of light against a backdrop so thick with smoke as to be "pitch black."
"I have littles — they're 4 years old and they would not walk out of my classroom door," Lam said. "So I put everything down, except my lunchbox because I was starving, but I grabbed the four kids' hands."
Within 20 minutes, they were driven away from campus, never to see it again. The ears burned.
Read more: Abcarian: The Palisades fire took their classroom. Their teacher is trying to give it back to them
The following morning, Lam received word of the school's destruction and the immediate cancellation of classes. She knew she would eventually resume teaching, but everything inside her classroom — personal effects, teaching tools and supplies — was gone.
A friend from Colorado persuaded Lam to set up an Amazon wish list, which was filled with modest asks: pencils, glue, scissors and paper. But those materials only met rudimentary needs.
As she viewed images of the burned-out school plastered on social media, she worried about her students' mental well-being.
Lam was struck by one set of photos in particular: One of her favorite Disney influencers, Rosie Keiser, posted images on her Instagram feed that included a photo of a melted play set.
"When I saw that, I was thinking, 'That's my school,'" Lam said. "That play structure is where the kids play. That was my classroom."
Lam reached out to Keiser, a disability advocate known as Gothic Rosie. The Northridge resident, who has multiple sclerosis, challenged Disney's recent change to stricter standards for its Disability Access Pass.
Like Lam, Keiser is known for her ears.
Keiser could most easily be spotted among the roughly 47,000 daily Disneyland visitors by looking for her custom-created black-and-purple Maleficent horns, based on the iconic "Sleeping Beauty" villain. She found the horns at Walgreens in 2016 and hot-glued a Hot Topic bow in the center.
Lam, whose mother died five years ago from complications related to multiple sclerosis, found a kindred spirit in Keiser.
They spoke daily in the immediate aftermath of the blaze.
"She was distraught," Keiser said. "She thought, 'How am I going to be the Disney teacher without my Disney stuff?'"
Shortly after their first conversation, Keiser asked her thousands of Facebook followers if they could help replace the missing ears.
"Disney fans are hoarders of extraordinary stuff, and I thought to myself, I have lot of ears that I've bought over the years," Keiser said. "I could give her some and see what the others think."
Keiser said fans responded by donating ears in a variety of themes — Haunted Mansion, Star Wars, Main Street Electrical Parade, Minnie Mouse — from personal piles and storage.
She collected them via mail and by meeting fans at Disneyland.
On Jan. 26, Keiser delivered nearly 30 pairs of ears to Lam in the lobby of the Grand Californian Hotel.
For Lam, the kindness offered a moment of joy in a sea of sorrow.
"She showed up with three bags with Disney ears filled to brim, which made me feel appreciated and loved," Lam said. "January was a really hard month."
The fan response ignited in Keiser a philanthropic urge.
Days before she dropped off the hats, she founded the Fairy Gothmother Project. The crowdsourcing venture aims to find victims of the Eaton and Palisades blazes who had lost Disney mementos.
Applicants to the Fairy Gothmother Project have asked for ears, hats, spirit jerseys and Loungefly backpacks to be replaced.
Keiser and her army responded with a Mickey Sorcerer mini-backpack, pink spirit jersey and Mickey band hat on Feb. 8, a Christmas spirit jersey and matching Mickey and Minnie ears along with a Haunted Mansion crow on Feb. 26, and a Remy key chain and a pair of Anaheim Ducks ears on March 6.
"The people impacted by the L.A. fires lost everything," Keiser said. "Giving them a piece of the magic, of our magic, is probably the most meaningful and special thing we can do with our Disney merchandise hoards."
About a week later, Lam received another shipment from Keiser that included large Mickey and Minnie cutouts, a Mickey door decoration and a Disney border decoration crowdfunded via the Fairy Gothmother Project.
They now decorate her temporary classroom in a bungalow at Brentwood Science Magnet.
In some ways, Lam's classroom has become an oasis for her group of 4- and 5-year-olds traumatized by fire and destruction. It's a slimmed-down Happiest Place on Earth, with Disney ornaments and stickers interspersed among shapes, colors and numbers.
When the students struggle to describe their weekend or draw pictures of their pets, Mickey serves as a ready substitute.
"They'll draw Mickey and Minnie when they can't quite describe what they're feeling or thinking," Lam said on a recent morning, donning a pair of Disney Halloween-themed ears. "They can always relate to them."
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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