On a quiet morning in Pacific Palisades, Chris Hetherington, CEO of Fathead, stood in his home with his wife, never imagining the nightmare about to unfold. It was 10:30 a.m. when the wildfires sparked, driven by 80-mile-an-hour winds that sent flames racing at a staggering pace—five football fields a minute at one point, as Chris later recalled. "We never thought our house was going to burn down," he shared in an emotional interview on the NFL Players Second Acts podcast (watch here). But within hours, that unthinkable reality hit. Chris and his wife scrambled to get their kids—ages six and ten—from school, grabbing only a handful of items in the chaos: his son’s baseball gear and a few championship rings from travel ball. They thought they’d be back the next day. They were wrong.

The fire claimed everything. Eleven years of NFL memories—game worn helmets and jerseys, awards, mementos from a gritty career as a fullback—gone. More devastatingly, his children’s treasures—their toys, pictures, love letters, custom Xmas ornaments, clothes, and the little pieces of home that grounded them—reduced to ash. The school they loved, the church they attended, the sports facilities where they played—all torched. "It was just rubble and ash," Chris said, his voice heavy as he described returning in a hazmat suit, searching for anything to salvage for his 10-year-old son, who pleaded, "Dad, if you can find anything of mine, it would mean so much to me." All he could recover were two charred face masks from his football days.

For Chris, a former Yale quarterback turned NFL fullback and standout special teams player, who battled Hall of Fame defenders like Bruce Smith and Reggie White, this was a hit harder than any he’d taken on the field. But as he grappled with his family’s displacement—shuttling from evacuation to evacuation, eventually landing in Newport Beach to rebuild some normalcy for his kids—he saw the bigger picture. The ripple effect of the wildfires stretched far beyond his own loss. Entire neighborhoods and communities were shattered. Families lost homes, jobs, and businesses. Kids lost their schools and their sense of safety. Communities that once thrived were left reeling, and Chris felt the weight of it all. "It’s been a battle," he admitted, "dealing with a massive amount of loss and sadness—not just for us, but for everyone."