California family loses business in wildfire: A place that 'brought people together'
The Morehart family didn't just lose their pet supply store, which had been a cornerstone of the community for over 60 years, in the Palisades Fire. They lost a core memory of their late father and husband.
The Malibu Feed Bin saw four generations of families pass through its doors, creating a deep sense of community, ever since Patricia Morehart and her late husband, Marty Morehart, took it over in 1966. They were 20 years old at the time. Last week, it was among the thousands of homes and businesses destroyed in the deadly fires that swept through the Los Angeles area.
The store, which sat at the base of Topanga Canyon, felt like home, not only to Patricia Morehart's family, but to many community members that frequented their store. After Marty Morehart's death in 2020, Patricia Morehart continued to run operations with two of her four children.
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"The hole that was there when he went to heaven was huge, but I had all these memories around me," Patricia Morehart told FOX Business. They had been married for nearly 55 years before his death.
But when the store was destroyed in the fire last week, she said it felt as though she was losing her husband all over again.
"It's not the building. It's really not the physical thing. It's those memories," she said.
On Jan. 6, Patricia Morehart told her employees to close up shop around 11 a.m. Her employees grabbed the animals on the property, cleared the cash register, locked the doors and went home.
Patricia Morehart and her daughter, Kasey Morehart, didn't think anything would happen to the store given that it had always been the command post for the local fire department during natural disasters.
After Kasey Morehart posted on Facebook that the store was destroyed in the fire, the community reached out, many describing what the Malibu Feed Bin and the Morehart family meant to them.
"From what I am reading, the store made people happy when they were there. They felt safe and welcomed, kinda like going to your mom’s house. I loved that part," Kasey Morehart said.
Patricia Morehart remembered the early days of the store, when she managed operations while Marty Morehart handled the deliveries. Their children grew up in the business, and later, two of them — Kasey and Katie — joined the family team.
But Patricia Morehart made it clear that it was far more than a pet store. It was a place that "brought people together."
Over the years, the family's store held events such as hamster derbies and mutt contests. They sold candy, pickles and, for many years, Christmas trees. It even became a reliable drop-off point for parents, she said.
But for Kasey Morehart, the store was her "safe place."
"What I don’t talk about much, except recently to my mom and sister Katie, was that store was the only thing in my life that was stable," she said. "It was always the same and always there."
More than that, it was also a way for her to "keep her dad's legacy alive."
Although the store is gone, Patricia Morehart knows her family is lucky.
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"There are so many other people that are hurting so much worse than I am. And I have to put that in perspective," she said. "It is a big loss… but so many other people have nothing left."
The Moreharts hope to reopen the shop one day.
If her husband were here today, Patricia Morehart said she knows exactly what he'd tell her.
"I could almost hear his voice saying... ‘We had 60 years of a great run down there. We need to move forward,’" she said. "And in the back of his mind, he would have already been formulating a plan to do something."