Newport Beach jeweler restores heirloom jewelry that survived Palisades fire, now symbols of a family’s resilience
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The Knap family were visiting relatives in Norway, half a world away when the first alerts and evacuation warnings related to the Palisades fire buzzed their phones on Tuesday, Jan. 7. Hours later, even after friends sent them videos of charred piles of ashes and debris that had once been a neighborhood known as the Alphabet Streets, they could hardly believe that the place they had called home for the past 11 years had disappeared overnight.
Julie Knap called the sequence of events “surreal.” Her husband Ulrik Knap said he was “just numb.” They lived three blocks away from a fire station.
“We have been evacuated before,” Julie Knap said. “So we went to bed thinking, even though we’re getting a lot of text messages, ‘They’re not going to let the town burn. They’ll stop this.’”
The couple wound up staying with Julie Knap’s parents in Newport Beach after landing in California the weekend after the L.A.-area fires started. Ulrik Knap couldn’t sleep the night before he visited what remained of their neighborhood for the first time.
The reality of the devastation wrought by the fire finally set in on him as he passed rows of empty lots where multimillion-dollar homes once sat. When he got to where his house used to be, he used a shovel and chicken wire to sift through ashes one scoop at a time. A few ceramic sculptures their teenage children had made in kindergarten had survived; their vibrantly painted surfaces were now faded or completely bleached white after prolonged exposure to extreme heat.
A tall safe that housed some of their family’s most precious heirlooms was literally the only thing left standing on their property. Flames had defeated its lock and heat-resistant plating, forcing it open and allowing ammunition stored within to discharge. Inside, amid a pile consisting of disintegrated paperwork, an exploded Rolex and ruined revolvers, Ulrik found one ring handed down to them by his grandmother, another his wife’s mother had given to them on Julie’s 30th birthday and an antique bracelet they had been planning to give to their daughter when she turned 18.
“I gasped,” Julie said. “I was so excited. I just didn’t think we were going to find anything in there, and I had set my mind to accept that. So it was such a moment of joy to see those. Just a little luck came our way.”
The jewelry that survived the fire will go on to become reminders of their family’s resilience as it gets passed down to future generations. But first, the pieces are being restored to their original luster by George Bandar, owner and sole craftsman of Master Jewelers Newport.
“I have worked on the most difficult pieces during my career, and this is one of them,” Bandar said. “... if you don’t have experience, forget about it. You’ll ruin it.”
Body oil that had collected on the jewelry after years of being worn were baked into the gold, and the delicate soldering points connecting the gems to the metal were weakened. Bandar had to surgically remove each stone and use highly corrosive chemicals to cut through the discoloration caused by flames.
So far, he has finished working on one of the two rings the Knaps have entrusted him with, and that took about 11 hours. He said he’s only charging them the cost of materials and considers the task a personal labor of love.
“I work on it like it’s my own,” Bandar said. “My weak point is when I hear it has sentimental value. When I hear that, I take it like it comes from my grandma to me.”
The master jeweler with over 50 years of experience said the opportunity to help people in need was his “real profit.” He’s willing to offer his skills and a deal similar to his arrangement with the Knaps to others with damaged valuables that survived the Palisades and Eaton fires.
“Even if other shops have turned them away and said ‘no way,’ come to me and I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “I’d say at least 98% of the time I can bring them back to life.”
Bandar had been selling jewelry directly to wholesalers for about 20 years before opening his shop in Newport Beach during the pandemic. It was a risk, but the chance to get to know the people who wear his pieces on a personal level instead of only dealing with middlemen was worth it. He typically works at a bench next to a window in his shop, where curious residents often stop by to watch and chat.
He’s been commissioned to make or restore at least 3,000 pieces in the four years since starting his business in Newport Beach. He takes each one personally regardless of the monetary value of the jewelry, focused instead on the meaning it holds for his clients.
“After hearing what they had been through with the fire and everything, of course I had to do something,” Bandar said.
Gestures of kindness from friends, acquaintances like Bandar and sometimes complete strangers have helped sustain the Knaps as they navigate a host of uncertainties moving forward. They and many of their neighbors hope to return and rebuild the community they had grown to love.
Insurance should help the Knaps work toward that goal. But many who were either renting or dropped from their policies due to the seemingly inevitable risk of wildfire in Southern California weren’t as fortunate.
“The key is, you’ve got to let the people who lived there decide what to do with it,” Ulrik said. “It’s not the bureaucrats’ job to, frankly, take this tragedy to serve their political agenda.”
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