A hang glider for four decades, 69-year-old Arthur Simoneau was a calculated risk-taker. And so, as residents fled the Pacific Palisades fire Tuesday, Simoneau headed closer to the inferno.
He was returning from a ski trip in Mammoth when he learned of the evacuation orders for his Topanga home in the Santa Monica Mountains, said Steve Murillo, a longtime friend and fellow hang glider.
Simoneau kept going.
“He was heading home to save it if he could,” said Murillo, who spoke with Simoneau on Tuesday night as his friend drove back toward Topanga. “Arthur was the kind of guy that once he put his mind to something, you couldn’t really talk him out of stuff.”
Murillo texted his friend directions — which roads were open, which were closed. He never got a text back.
Arthur Simoneau in a glider last summer. His friends said he was one of the pioneers of the sport and would go hang-gliding every weekend.
(Kia Ravanfar)
On Thursday, officials found Simoneau’s body, another grim notch in a mounting death toll fueled by one of the worst wildfires in the state’s history. As of Saturday night, Los Angeles County had reported 16 deaths.
Simoneau was found near the doorway of his home, apparently trying to defend it, Murillo said.
Friends and neighbors say Simoneau represented the best parts of Topanga, a tight-knit bohemian mountain community with a reputation for welcoming the free-spirited.
He was soft-spoken and quirky, his long silver hair kept in a ponytail. Every weekend was an opportunity to hang-glide. Back in the day, he even did it barefoot. Then he switched to sandals.
“He was a denizen of Topanga. He fit in good,” said Malury Silberman, a friend who met him through the Sylmar Hang Gliding Assn. “Kind of a grown-up hippie — never a harsh word out of the guy.”
His neighbor Susan Dumond said everyone in the area knew him as the informal caretaker of Swenson Drive, where he lived. He’d been one of the first to move…