Burn zones from the most catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles history have yet to be fully cleaned up, and thousands of Angelenos remain displaced. But on Sunday, people turned out in droves along the 26.2 mile route of the Los Angeles Marathon, to cheer on more than 21,000 runners who took part. It marked a reaffirmation of vitality in a community that endured disaster just a few months ago.

Among those who finished the race was 15-year-old fire evacuee Abel Rivera, whose home in Altadena burned down in January. Rivera is on his high school running team, and competed in the LA Marathon for the first time last year. For both Rivera and the Los Angeles community, the event was a show of resilience in the aftermath of tragedy.

‘Fifteen years of my life is basically gone’

Rivera lost almost everything when the Eaton fire leveled his home on January 7th.

“I lost a house and not really the way I wanted to. I didn’t want to leave it behind that way,” Rivera tells NPR.

NPR listeners may remember Rivera from a piece on the radio in mid-January, just days after the fires tore through LA.

“Fifteen years of my life is basically gone,” he said at the time. “Everything that I’ve accomplished, every single medal I have, every single collection – everything I had is gone.”

Abel Rivera and his mother, Lupe Melchor, pin on their race bibs at Dodger Stadium, the starting point of the 26.2 mile LA Marathon.

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Everything, including his prized medal for finishing last year’s marathon, and his running shoes. When listeners learned this detail, some reached out to offer him their own 2024 medals. The McCourt Foundation, which puts on the marathon, provided a replacement upon learning of Rivera’s story.

In the aftermath of the tragedy, Rivera relied on running as a way to keep calm and centered. Except for a month-long pause due to concerns about air quality, he and more than a dozen other teammates from Pasadena’s Blair High School continued training and participating in shorter road races to prepare for Sunday’s big event.

Rivera expected the run – starting from LA’s Dodger Stadium, and winding through downtown, past City Hall, Hollywood landmarks, and down Beverly Hills’ Rodeo Drive – to be painful.

“I think for the first 10 miles, I’ll probably be alright, then mile 11-12 I’ll probably be struggling. I’d say 20-24 I’ll probably be hurting a lot,” Rivera said shortly before the race.

But unlike the emotional pain he’s endured as a result of the fires – this is a kind of pain he gets to choose.

‘Doing it for our city’

Rivera isn’t the only student from his running team who was personally affected by the blazes earlier this year. Two other students from Blair High School running club also lost their homes, according to their teacher and coach Eric Glenn, and half the team had to be evacuated from their homes for weeks. Their school district, Pasadena Unified, closed its campuses – also for weeks – since several schools in the district burned.

Participants prepare for the start of the Los Angeles Marathon Sunday, in Los Angeles.

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Glenn said it was rewarding to hit the streets of Los Angeles as a team: “It just feels like we’re doing it for our city, you know?”

Rivera and his teammates started the marathon just past seven in the morning. He ran side-by-side with his mother, Lupe Melchor, for the first half. And in the early afternoon on Sunday, after about six hours of running, Rivera crossed the finish line to earn his second LA Marathon finisher medal in a row.

“It feels like a milestone,” he said at the finish line. “And running the marathon is nostalgic. It reminds me of times before I had the fire.”

His mom finished about 50 minutes later.

“We didn’t finish together, but we did it,” she said, after giving her son a hug and walking through the finisher’s area arm-in-arm with him.

Marathon runners wind down Hollywood Boulevard on Sunday, in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, a popular tourist landmark and the site of many film premieres.

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Every runner on Blair High School’s marathon team finished, including Coach Glenn. In all, about 3,000 Los Angeles area middle and high school students ran the LA Marathon, as part of a non-profit program called Students Run LA.

“They just did a hard thing while going through a hard thing. And it’s really a testament to their resilience and it’s super inspirational,” Glenn said.

Cleanup and rebuilding is only getting started in Los Angeles. Rivera and his family are still without a permanent home. But they aren’t without hope.

“I feel really good about myself, that no matter what, I can always push through,” Rivera said.

It’s a reminder of resilience, and the capacity to keep going, even when it really hurts.