Lifestyle

'The only thing still left.' Volunteers race to save Altadena's vintage tiles from the bulldozers

Published

10 months ago

March 18, 2025

'The only thing still left.' Volunteers race to save Altadena's vintage tiles from the bulldozers

The team of masons, covered in dust and sweat, had been working in the ruins of the Altadena house for hours when a shout echoed across the wreckage.

Volunteer Devon Douglas emerged from a pit of rubble that had once been the living room, staggering under the weight of a concrete slab more than a foot wide.

“It’s a stair,” Douglas said, turning toward homeowner Valerie Elachi. “A whole stair, and all the tiles.”

It was a bittersweet moment for Elachi, 76, who had danced down that tiled staircase when she and her husband first saw the home during an open house in the early 1980s.

She watched from her patio wall as five volunteers chiseled the historic tiles from the stairs and from her massive living room fireplace. Having something to salvage was a gift, she thought, and a bitter reminder of all they had lost.

Cliff Douglas uses a chisel to gently remove historic Batchelder tiles from the fireplace of a 1923 Altadena home built by noted local architects Myron Hunt and Elmer Gray.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The work on Elachi’s home was being done by a ragtag group of volunteers who call their collective Save the Tiles. The group is racing to remove and preserve thousands of vintage and historically significant tiles from the Eaton fire burn zone before the properties are bulldozed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

As part of their work to remove debris and level lots for rebuilding, the Army Corps tears down everything left standing on a property. That includes chimneys and fireplaces, which can be left structurally weakened by fire.

“Anything you haven’t removed is gone forever,” said Eric Garland, one of the Save the Tiles organizers.

The volunteers have preserved the tiles from about 50 homes, and have about 150 left on their list. Already, they’ve had one close call, removing the tiles from one home just two days before the Army Corps arrived.

Finding enough skilled masons was the group’s first challenge. Now, their biggest hurdle is tracking down the homeowners and getting their permission to remove tiles from their properties.

A team of volunteers is using public records to trace homeowners, but they’re hitting a lot of dead ends. Property records generally don’t contain any contact information, and when they do, the phone numbers are often out of date. In some cases, the numbers ring to landlines that burned down.

“There will be a day, soon, when we wake up and there are no houses in our queue,” Garland said, “even though we know there are dozens left.”

A gloved hand places Mayan-style tiles, brown with some turquoise elements, next to each other in a cardboard box

The group’s last-ditch effort to reach homeowners is a letter. Mail is still being forwarded, Garland figured, so maybe it was worth a shot.

“Dear displaced neighbor,” the letter begins. “… We are just volunteers and Altadena neighbors desperate to reach you because we want to rescue your historic fireplace tiles for free. That’s it. No strings. Just trying to save what’s left of beautiful Altadena and bring some joy.”

:::

Garland embarked on the tile rescue mission after a walk through Altadena with his teenage daughter.

Their house survived the Eaton fire, but many on their street did not, including their neighbor Fred’s 1924 Spanish-style house. Amid the rubble, they spotted his century-old fireplace, its gray, brown and beige tiles still intact.

“That beautiful fireplace is all they have left,” Garland’s daughter said.

Garland emailed the neighborhood list-serv to ask whether anyone was saving the tiles. One response sent him to Douglas, who had written on Reddit that her father, Cliff, a professional mason, was volunteering to remove tiles from ruined homes for free.

The teams joined forces. In early February, they gathered dozens of volunteers in the parking lot of an Aldi grocery store in Altadena. Garland and fellow volunteer organizer Stanley Zucker handed out printed maps of the burn zone and sent small groups out on foot, telling them to stick to the sidewalks and photograph any tile that looked remotely historic.

In two days, the volunteers completed an ad-hoc architectural survey of thousands of burned properties. They whittled down the list to more than 200 homes with Arts and Crafts tile, many by the famous Pasadena artisan Ernest Batchelder and one of his main competitors, Claycraft.

First produced on the banks of the Arroyo Seco in 1910, Batchelder tiles were a key part of the California Arts and Crafts movement, a return-to-nature style that was a response to the ornate designs of the Victorian era and the industrialization of American cities.

Most Batchelder tiles are in private homes, but they can also be found on the Pasadena Playhouse’s courtyard fountain, the floors of Pasadena’s All Saints Episcopal Church and the lobby of the downtown Los Angeles Fine Arts Building on 7th Street. (One of his largest surviving commissions, the 1914 Dutch Chocolate Shop in downtown, is generally closed to the public.)

California in the early 20th century was rich with clay and with cultural influence, said Amy Green of Silverlake Conservation, a firm that repairs and restores historic tile. In addition to the Arts and Crafts movement, tile artists began producing a wide variety of works inspired by traditional Mexican and Indigenous designs, as well as European styles like Delft.

A woman wearing red work gloves and a white apron holds a carved tile in her hands

“It reflects who and what we are,” Green said. “A very interesting mix of people that bring different aesthetics and skills to our work.”

Batchelder tiles can be palm-sized or larger, with muted matte finishes and understated glazes. A company catalog from 1923 described the tiles as “luminous and mellow in character, somewhat akin to the quality of a piece of old tapestry.”

They could be ordered through a catalog and were relatively affordable, said Anuja Navare, the director of collections at the Pasadena Museum of History, which maintains a private registry of homes with Batchelder tiles. Many middle-class families splurged a little and installed them in new bungalows in the 1910s and 1920s.

“He made beauty available to a person with modest means,” Navare said.

The work of Batchelder and his competitors spread to thousands of homes, businesses and civic institutions across Southern California.

American tastes changed, and, by the end of World War II, many of the tile companies had gone under. Arts-and-crafts tiles were painted over or ripped out in favor of the avocado greens and burnt oranges of the 1970s.

But the tiles have come back into vogue in the last two decades and have developed a cult following among design enthusiasts. Actress Diane Keaton has renovated entire homes with historic tiles, and preservationists have been known to dumpster dive to save Batchelder tiles from the landfill.

A single salvaged tile can sell for more than $200. A fully intact hearth and mantle can fetch 100 times that.

Early on, the Save the Tiles group was on high alert for looters in the burn zone. Most people would drive past the ruins of a home without a second look at the fireplace, but a select few know what to look for.

Cliff Douglas, the mason, said he had assessed several fireplaces along one street and returned to find the tiles gone. It was impossible to know, he said, whether the tiles had been removed by the homeowners or by someone else.

The group tackled the most visible fireplaces first, including those on corner lots. One volunteer with Hollywood set-building experience built false fronts to disguise fireplaces as any other fire debris.

The tiles must be removed by trained masons, and Save the Tiles now has four crews ready every day, made up of volunteers and workers whose employers are covering their wages. The group plans to start paying the masons from a GoFundMe that has now raised more than $100,000.

A sandstone-colored fireplace and mantel with tiles with Mayan-style designs

About 20 volunteers learned from Green how to properly clean, catalog and store the tiles. Some cracked tiles will still need to be professionally restored, which will cost money, but a lot of the work can be done by amateurs, Garland said.

Some of them are sitting in boxes on a side porch at Garland’s mother’s house, and others are in a climate-controlled warehouse in Harbor City donated by a friend in the tile industry. The tiles will wait until homeowners are ready to take them back.

The power of the project, Green said, is that the hearth has such importance in the home: “It provides warmth,” she said. “It’s where you gather.”

:::

Despite the pressure of the bulldozers moving closer, removing the tiles is delicate work that can’t be rushed.

On a recent weekend, ceramicist Jose Nonato stood in the rubble of a three-bedroom home along East Altadena Drive, his hair, forearms and apron coated in dust. The third-generation ceramicist from Mexico City saw a Facebook post about the rescue effort and showed up with his tools. He had been working for hours in the sun on his 30th wedding anniversary to extract tiles surrounding a fireplace.

The tiles had been fired once, a hundred years ago, in kilns that reached 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit, Nonato said. He said the Eaton fire had thrown them into thermal shock. They could crumble at any moment.

Nonato laid his chisel against the mortar and gingerly began to tap the top of the tool with a hammer. He gently pried loose a tile the size of a paperback book and wiped his hand across the dusty surface. A faint green hue shone through — a Batchelder.

By the end of the day, Nonato had rescued about 90% of the tiles and laid them on a blanket in the driveway in the same pattern as the fireplace. A few were broken and held together by red duct tape, but those would be repaired. Soon, the tiles would be cleaned, boxed and stored for the homeowners, who planned to rebuild.

“This is basically the only thing still left,” Nonato said. “This, and memories.”

:::

Elachi, the Altadena homeowner, had initially hoped that the tile volunteers could shore up the massive Batchelder fireplace in her living room so the home could be rebuilt around it.

Four men work on a fireplace surrounded by rubble

To her disappointment, Cliff Douglas told her that the mortar had been weakened in the fire. Everything would have to come down, he said, or the Army Corps would take it down themselves.

Elachi and her husband raised their daughter in the 1923 Pueblo Revival-style home and spent four decades caring for the property, embracing its Southwestern style and finding furniture and art that, along with the pink adobe walls and wood beams above the windows, would have looked at home in Santa Fe.

“This house was like another child to us,” Elachi said.

The fire had taken almost all of it: her husband’s memorabilia from 15 years as the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, their ceramics and furniture, all their photographs and books. The loss felt overwhelming and enraging. They hope to rebuild, but aren’t sure yet whether they will.

Lifestyle

10 books we’re looking forward to in early 2026

Published

9 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

10 books we’re looking forward to in early 2026

Two fiction books about good friends coming from different circumstances. Two biographies of people whose influence on American culture is, arguably, still underrated. One Liza Minnelli memoir. These are just a handful of books coming out in the first few months of 2026 that we’ve got our eye on.

Fiction

Autobiography of Cotton, by Cristina Rivera Garza, Feb. 3

Garza, who won a Pulitzer in 2024 for memoir/autobiography, actually first published Autobiography of Cotton back in 2020, but it’s only now getting an English translation. The book blends fiction with the author’s own familial history to tell the story of cotton cultivation along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Crux, by Gabriel Tallent, Jan. 20

Tallent’s last novel, My Absolute Darling, was a harrowing coming of age story about a teenage girl surviving her abusive survivalist father. But it did find pockets of beauty in the outdoors. Tallent’s follow up looks to be similarly awestruck by nature. It’s about two young friends, separated by class and opportunity, but bound together by a love of rock climbing.

Half His Age, by Jennette McCurdy, Jan. 20

The former iCarly actress’ bracing and brutally honest memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, was a huge hit. It spent weeks on bestseller’s lists, and is being adapted into a series for Apple TV+. Now McCurdy’s set to come out with her fiction debut, about a teenage girl who falls for her high school creative writing teacher.

Kin, by Tayari Jones, Feb. 24

Similarly to Crux, Kin also follows two friends across the years as options and opportunities pull them apart. The friends at the center of this book are two women who grew up without moms. Jones’ last novel, 2018’s An American Marriage, was a huge hit with critics.

Seasons of Glass & Iron, by Amal El-Mohtar

Seasons of Glass & Iron: Stories, by Amal El-Mohtar, March 24

El-Mohtar is an acclaimed science-fiction writer, and this book is a collection of previously published short stories and poetry. Many of the works here have been honored by the big science-fiction/fantasy awards, including the titular story, which is a feminist re-telling of two fairy tales.

Nonfiction

A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides, by Gisèle Pelicot, Feb. 17

Pelicot’s story of rape and sexual assault – and her decision to wave anonymity in the trial – turned her into a galvanizing figure for women across the world. Her writing her own story of everything that happened is also a call to action for others to do the same.

Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane, by Andy Beta, March 3

For decades, the life and work of Alice Coltrane has lived in the shadow of her husband, John Coltrane. This deeply researched biography hopes to properly contextualize her as one of the most visionary and influential musicians of her time.

Football, by Chuck Klosterman, Jan. 20

One of our great essaysists and (over?) thinkers turns his sights onto one of the last bits of monoculture we’ve got. But in one of the pieces in this collection, Klosterman wonders, how long until football is no longer the summation of American culture? But until that time comes, there’s plenty to dig into from gambling to debates over the true goat.

Kids, Wait Till You Hear This! by Liza Minnelli, with Michael Feinstein, March 20

Minnelli told People that previous attempts at telling her story “didn’t get it right,” so she’s doing it herself. This new memoir promises to get into her childhood, her marriages, and her struggles with substance abuse.

Tom Paine’s War: The Words that Rallied a Nation and the Founder of Our Time, by Jack Kelly, Jan. 6

If you haven’t heard, it’s a big birthday year for America. And it’s a birthday that might not have happened if not for the words of Thomas Paine. This new book from historian Jack Kelly makes the argument that Paine’s words are just as important and relevant to us today.

Lifestyle

At 70, she embraced her Chumash roots and helped revive a dying skill

Published

10 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

At 70, she embraced her Chumash roots and helped revive a dying skill

Around 1915, the last known Chumash basket maker, Candelaria Valenzuela, died in Ventura County, and with her went a skill that had been fundamental to the Indigenous people who lived for thousands of years in the coastal regions between Malibu and San Luis Obispo.

A century and two years later, 70-year-old Santa Barbara native Susanne Hammel-Sawyer took a class out of curiosity to learn something about her ancestors’ basket-making skills.

Hammel-Sawyer is 1/16 Chumash, the great-great-great-granddaughter of Maria Ysidora del Refugio Solares, one of the most revered ancestors of the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians for her work in preserving its nearly lost Samala language.

But Hammel-Sawyer knew nearly nothing about Chumash customs when she was a child. As a young mother, she often took her four children to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, where she said she loved to admire the museum’s extensive collection of Chumash baskets, “but I had no inkling I would ever make them.”

Nonetheless, today, at age 78, Hammel-Sawyer is considered one of the Santa Ynez Band’s premier basket makers, with samples of her work on display at three California museums.

Short, reddish brown sticks of dried basket rush sit in a small basket in Susanne Hammel-Sawyer’s kitchen, waiting to be woven into one of her baskets. The reddish color only appears at the bottom ends of the reeds, after they dry, so she saves every inch to create designs in her baskets. “These are my gold,” she says.

(Sara Prince / For The Times)

She grows the basket rush (Juncus textilis) reeds that make up the weaving threads of her baskets in a huge galvanized steel water trough outside her Goleta home and searches in the nearby hills for other reeds: primarily Baltic rush (Juncus balticus) to form the bones or foundation of the basket and skunk bush (Rhus aromatica var. trilobata) to add white accents to her designs.

All her basket materials are gathered from nature, and her tools are simple household objects: a large plastic food storage container for soaking her threads and the rusting lid of an old can with different-sized nail holes to strip her reeds to a uniform size. Her baskets are mostly the yellowish brown color of her main thread, strips of basket rush made pliant after soaking in water.

The basket reeds often develop a reddish tint at the bottom part of the plant when they’re drying. “Those are my gold,” she said, because she uses those short ends to add reddish designs. Or sometimes she just weaves them into the main basket for added flair.

The only other colors for the baskets come from skunk bush reeds, which she has to split and peel to reveal the white stems underneath, and some of the basket reeds that she dyes black in a big bucket in her backyard.

“This is my witches’ brew,” she said laughing as she stirred the viscous inky liquid inside the bucket. “We have to make our own from anything with tannin — oak galls, acorns or black walnuts — and let it sit to dye it black.”

Hammel-Sawyer is remarkable not just for her skill as a weaver, but her determination to master techniques that went out of practice for nearly 100 years, said anthropologist and ethnobotanist Jan Timbrook, curator emeritus of ethnography at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, which claims to have the world’s largest museum collection of Chumash baskets.

“Susanne is one of the very few contemporary Chumash people who have truly devoted themselves to becoming skilled weavers,” said Timbrook, author of “Chumash Ethnobotany: Plant Knowledge Among the Chumash People of Southern California.” “Many have said they’d like to learn, but once they try it and realize how much time, patience and practice it requires … they just can’t keep it up.”

A woman with glasses and long, curly silver hair focuses intently on weaving a circular basket.

In her eight years, Hammel-Sawyer has made just 34 baskets of various sizes (she’s close to finishing her 35th), but she’s in no hurry.

“People always ask how long it takes to make a basket, and I tell them what Jan Timbrook likes to say, ‘It takes as long as it takes,’” Hammel-Sawyer said. “But for me, it’s a way of slowing down. I really object to how fast we’re all moving now, and it’s only going to get faster.”

She and her husband, Ben Sawyer, have a blended family of five children and nine grandchildren, most of whom live near their cozy home in Goleta. Family activities keep them busy, but Hammel-Sawyer thinks it’s important for her family to know she has other interests too.

“When you’re older, you have to be able to find a passion, something your children and grandchildren can see you do, not just playing golf or going on cruises, but doing something that matters,” she said. “I wish my grandmother and my father knew I was doing this because it’s a connection with our ancestors, but it’s also looking ahead, because these baskets I’m making will last a very long time. It’s something that comes from my past that I’m giving to family members to take into the future, so it’s worth my time.”

Also, this isn’t a business for Hammel-Sawyer. Her baskets are generally not for sale because she only makes them for family and friends, she said. The baskets at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History and the Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center belong to family members who were willing to loan them out for display. The Chumash museum does have some of Hammel-Sawyer’s baskets for sale in its gift shop, which she said she reluctantly agreed to provide after much urging, so the store could offer more items made by members of the Band.

An old rusting can lid punched with holes of various sizes, used to strip basketmaking reeds to a consistent size.

The only other basket she’s sold, she said, was to the Autry Museum of the American West, because she was so impressed by its exhibits involving Indigenous people. “I just believe so strongly in the message the Autry is giving the world about what really happened to Indigenous people, I thought I would be proud to have something there,” she said.

Making a basket takes so long, Hammel-Sawyer said, that it’s important for her to focus on the recipient, “so while I’m making it, I can think about them and pray about them. When you know you’re making a basket for someone, it has so much more meaning. And I’m so utilitarian, I always hope someone will use them.”

For instance, she said, she made three small baskets for the children of a friend and was delighted when one used her basket to carry flower petals to toss during a wedding. Almost any use is fine with her, she said, except storing fruit, because if the fruit molds, the basket will be ruined.

Baskets were a ubiquitous part of Chumash life before the colonists came. They used them for just about everything, from covering their heads and holding their babies to eating and even cooking, Timbrook said. They put hot rocks into their tightly woven baskets, along with food like acorn mush, to bring the contents to boil.

“People think pottery is a higher form of intellectual achievement, but the thing is, baskets are better than pottery,” Timbrook said. “They’ll do anything pottery will do; you can cook in them and store things in them, and when you drop them, they don’t break.”

Tule reeds that grows in the yard in preparation of basket weaving.

2 Susanne Hammel-Sawyer weaves a basket.

3 A basket sits during break in weaving with tools.

1. Tule reeds that grows in the yard in preparation of basket weaving. 2. Susanne Hammel-Sawyer weaves a basket. 3. A basket sits during a break in weaving with tools on a table. (Sara Prince / For The Times)

After Hammel-Sawyer’s first marriage ended, she worked as an assistant children’s librarian in Santa Barbara and met a reference librarian named Ben Sawyer. After their friendship turned romantic, they married in 1997 and moved, first to Ashland, Ore., then Portland, and then the foothills of the Sierras in Meadow Valley, Calif., where they took up organic farming for a dozen years.

Meadow Valley’s population was 500, and the big town was nearby Quincy, the county seat, with about 5,000 residents, but it still had an orchestra and she and her husband were both members. She played cello and he viola, not because they were extraordinary musicians, she said, but because “we played well enough, and if we wanted an orchestra, we would have to take part. I loved how strong people were there. We were all more self-sufficient than when we lived in the city.”

The Sawyers moved back to Santa Barbara in 2013, the year after her father died, to help care for her mother, who had developed Alzheimer’s disease. And for the next four years, between caring for her mother, who died in 2016, and the birth of her grandchildren, family became her focus.

But in 2017, the year she turned 70, Hammel-Sawyer finally had the space to begin looking at other activities. Being she’s 1/16 Chumash, she was eligible for classes taught by the Santa Ynez Band. She had seen several class offerings come through over the years, but nothing really captured her interest until she saw a basket-weaving class offered by master basket maker Abe Sanchez, as part of the tribe’s ongoing effort to revive the skill among its members.

Most Chumash baskets have some kind of pattern, although today people have to guess at the meaning of the symbols, Timbrook said. Some look like squiggles, zigzaggy lightning bolts or sun rays, but the wonder, marveled Hammel-Sawyer, is how the makers were able to do the mental math to keep the patterns even and consistent, even for baskets that were basically everyday tools.

Hammel-Sawyer is careful to follow the basics of Chumash weaving, using the same native plants for her materials and weaving techniques that include little ticks of contrasting color stitches on the rim, something visible in most Chumash baskets. She keeps a good supply of bandages for her fingers because the reeds have sharp edges when they’re split, and it’s easy to get the equivalent of paper cuts.

She keeps just two baskets at her house — her first effort, which “wasn’t good enough to give anybody,” she said, laughing — and a basket hat started by her late sister, Sally Hammel.

Two hands hold a Chumash basket hat with irregular stitches in the middle.

“Sally was an artist in pottery, singing, acting and living life to the fullest,” Hammel-Sawyer said, and she was very excited to learn basketry. Her basket hat started well, but about a third of the way in, she got cancer “and her stitches became more and more ragged. She had trouble concentrating, trouble preparing materials,” Hammel-Sawyer said. “Everything became so difficult that she hid the basket away. I know she didn’t even want to look at it, let alone have anyone else see it.”

After her sister died in 2020, Hammel-Sawyer had a hard time finding the basket, “but I did, and I asked my teacher what to do, and he said, ‘Just try to make sense of her last row’ … So that’s what I did.” She added a thick black-and-white band above the ragged stitches and finished the blond rim with the traditional contrasting ticking.

The hat rests now above the window in Hammel-Sawyer’s living room, except when she wears it to tribal events.

“Sally and I were very close, and I think she’d just be happy to know it was finished and appreciated,” Hammel-Sawyer said. “Even the hard parts … deeply appreciated.”

Lifestyle

Nick Reiner’s attorney removes himself from case

Published

21 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Nick Reiner’s attorney removes himself from case

Nick Reiner arrives at the premiere of Spinal Tap II: The End Continues on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025, in Los Angeles.

Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

hide caption

toggle caption

Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

LOS ANGELES – Alan Jackson, the high-power attorney representing Nick Reiner in the stabbing death of his parents, producer-actor-director Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Singer Reiner, withdrew from the case Wednesday.

Reiner will now be represented by public defender Kimberly Greene.

Wearing a brown jumpsuit, Reiner, 32, didn’t enter a plea during the brief hearing. A judge has rescheduled his arraignment for Feb. 23.

Following the hearing, defense attorney Alan Jackson told a throng of reporters that Reiner is not guilty of murder.

“We’ve investigated this matter top to bottom, back to front. What we’ve learned and you can take this to the bank, is that pursuant to the law of this state, pursuant to the law in California, Nick Reiner is not guilty of murder,” he said.

Rob Reiner, right, and wife Michele Singer Reiner attend the SNL50: The Homecoming Concert at Radio City Music Hall on Friday, Feb. 14 in New York.

Reiner is charged with first-degree murder, with special circumstances, in the stabbing deaths of his parents – father Rob, 78, and mother Michele, 70.

The Los Angeles coroner ruled that the two died from injuries inflicted by a knife.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of death. LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said he has not decided whether to seek the death penalty.

“We are fully confident that a jury will convict Nick Reiner beyond a reasonable doubt of the brutal murder of his parents — Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner … and do so unanimously,” he said.

Michele Singer Reiner, Rob Reiner and their son Nick in 2013.

Last month, after Reiner’s initial court appearance, Jackson said, “There are very, very complex and serious issues that are associated with this case. These need to be thoroughly but very carefully dealt with and examined and looked at and analyzed. We ask that during this process, you allow the system to move forward – not with a rush to judgment, not with jumping to conclusions.”

The younger Reiner had a long history of substance abuse and attempts at rehabilitation.

His parents had become increasingly alarmed about his behavior in the weeks before the killings.

Legal experts say there is a possibility that Reiner’s legal team could attempt to use an insanity defense.

Defense attorney Dmitry Gorin, a former LA County prosecutor, said claiming insanity or mental impairment presents a major challenge for any defense team.

FILE — Actor/Producer/Director Rob Reiner (center) and wife Michele Singer (L) and son Nick Reiner (R) attend Teen Vogue's Back-to-School Saturday kick-off event at The Grove on August 9, 2013 in Los Angeles, California.

He told The Los Angeles Times, “The burden of proof is on the defense in an insanity case, and the jury may see the defense as an excuse for committing a serious crime.“

“The jury sets a very high bar on the defendant because it understands that it will release him from legal responsibility,” Gorin added.

The death of Rob Reiner, who first won fame as part of the legendary 1970s sitcom All in the Family, playing the role of Michael “Meathead” Stivic, was a beloved figure in Hollywood and his death sent shockwaves through the community.

After All in the Family, Reiner achieved even more fame as a director of films such as A Few Good Men, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally. He was nominated for four Golden Globe Awards in the best director category.

Rob Reiner came from a show business pedigree. His father, Carl Reiner, was a legendary pioneer in television who created the iconic 1960s comedy, The Dick Van Dyke Show.