Often wedged between Dave Hild’s van dashboard and windshield, the retired zookeeper’s road maps range from blueprint-style scrolls to thick, paperback atlases.
“These don’t require batteries or a signal, and I can drop them in the creek and they’ll still work,” said the former Charles Paddock Zoo employee, who’s lived off-grid in his van for the past three years.
Apart from some winter months, he’s spent the majority of his nomad days camped at Santa Margarita Lake, one of the San Luis Obispo County parks impacted by evacuation orders related to the Gifford Fire, which consumed about 131,000 acres in SLO and Santa Barbara counties in the first two weeks of August. Originally starting along Highway 166, the fire spread into both counties with the latter half of the blaze concentrated in SLO County.
While websites and apps like Watch Duty and InciWeb provided regular updates on California’s largest wildfire of the year, Hild mostly relied on the radio to stay informed, he told the Sun on Aug. 15 while staying at an American Red Cross evacuation shelter in Santa Margarita.
“My problem with this internet stuff—besides me being a Boomer—is some people … assume that every person has a smartphone and is connected and can pay one of the major telephone companies $150 a month or whatever,” Hild said while holding his flip phone out. “I’m a senior citizen living on minimal Social Security. I have to buy a drug dealer phone and pay cash once a month, and I don’t have internet access.
“My most reliable source is KCBX, which Trump is trying to murder,” Hild added about the local public radio station.
He drove his van to Santa Margarita Community Hall on Aug. 11, the first day the venue became one of the American Red Cross’ evacuation centers.
The nonprofit was also stationed at spots in Pismo Beach, the Santa Maria Valley, and New Cuyama over the course of the multi-day megafire, reported as 95 percent contained as of Aug. 19.
Before Hild registered at the Santa Margarita site on Aug. 11, he had one question for the volunteers manning the shelter’s front desk.
“All I asked them was for a safe parking place where I don’t bother anybody, and nobody bothers me, and I can’t be arrested,” he said. “That relieves so much stress.”
Between Aug. 11 and 15, Hild occasionally ventured inside the shelter for coffee and to use the building’s bathroom, but slept each night in his van, parked outside of the community hall—next door to Santa Margarita’s original jail and constable’s office, preserved as a museum by a local historical society.
Hild joked that he might end up locked in there if someone reported him parked nearby in one of the area’s residential neighborhoods.
“If it wasn’t for this safe parking, I don’t know where I would have gone,” Hild said. “Roadside? Then you have ‘Karens’ and people who immediately accuse you of being drug-addled. … Hippies and environmentalists and retired van dwellers like me: Where do you go in SLO County without getting your vehicle impounded, ticketed, hassled all hours of the night by the police?”
American Red Cross volunteer Manny Lerma, who traveled from Bakersfield to support Santa Margarita’s evacuation point during the Gifford Fire, told the Sun that shelter registrants were welcome to sleep inside the building—supplied with about 100 folded cots, blankets, and pillows—or stay in their own vehicles onsite like Hild.
Assuring people that either option is safe, especially during late hours of the night, is an occasional task for Red Cross volunteers during conversations with some incoming evacuees, said Lerma, a retiree who’s worked with the nonprofit for about 11 years.
“We’ve had three people stay indoors, and two that’ve stayed outside,” Lerma told the Sun on Aug. 13 at the Santa Margarita shelter, which remained open through Aug. 17—the same day officials reduced evacuation orders to warnings at Santa Margarita Lake and other areas west of the Los Padres National Forest.
On Aug. 19, SLO County Parks reported that warnings and orders were lifted at both Santa Margarita Lake and Lopez Lake, but that Lopez would remain closed as restoration work is in process.
The team of Red Cross volunteers behind the former Santa Margarita evacuation shelter worked in 12-hour shifts, some from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., others from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., according to Lerma.
“[We’re] here all night, vigilant, making sure these folks are safe and comfortable,” Lerma said.
In January, Lerma was among the Red Cross volunteers working at the Pasadena Convention Center, which housed more than 800 Eaton Fire evacuees, he recalled. During his time with the Red Cross, the Bakersfield resident has been deployed to areas across the country impacted by wildfires, floods, tornadoes, blizzards, and other disasters.
When emergencies reach a certain threshold, like the Gifford Fire’s status as a megafire, the Red Cross sends out a national alert for volunteers, Lerma explained.
“On a big event, they open it nationally, to whoever’s available. They’ll fly you in,” said Lerma, who added that the week he started working in Santa Margarita marked his 14th week in a row traveling to support different Red Cross initiatives.
There’s usually a two-week commitment per volunteer if they accept a call to travel far for a deployment, he added.
“That makes it more difficult for … most people who work. That’s why you see a lot of retirees in the Red Cross,” he said. “We have the time. We have more availability.”
Before the Santa Margarita evacuation shelter closed on Aug. 17, those who checked in had three meals available to them daily, and access to snacks and drinks 24/7, Lerma said.
While some took up the shelter’s offer of three hot meals and a cot, van dweller Hild said he limited himself to popping in and out of the building for his coffee fix and to occasionally chat with folks.
“Yesterday, I gave them all a lecture on rattlesnake bite treatment,” the former herpetoculturist said on Aug. 15.
Originally from Kentucky, Hild said he spent three decades working with reptiles for a few different zoos across the country before ending up in SLO County in 2003, the year he took a job at the Central Coast Zoo (formerly the Charles Paddock Zoo) in Atascadero.
He became attracted to the area after visiting the Carrizo Plain National Monument and becoming acquainted with its lizard inhabitants, specifically the blunt-nosed leopard lizard.
“There’s so much wildlife out there. … You can sit there for half an hour and see more wildlife than I saw in 30 years,” Hild said. “I’m not really a hippie. My drug is adrenaline. I was a caver, a rock climber, and a kayaker. But I’m old now, so my adrenaline is when I slide my [van] door open in the morning and make my coffee, and a couple lizards climb onto my pant legs.”
This article appears in Aug 21-31, 2025.