Irvine : Man Who Lost Home in Fire Will Get Suite

Richard Pfost, a quadriplegic who lost his home in a fire last month, has a lot of friends he didn’t know about.

Today he’ll be moving out of the Veterans Administration Hospital in Long Beach, where he’s been living since the Sept. 9 fire for lack of a better place equipped to meet his needs. The move is a gift of the Irvine Co. and the Irvine Hilton Hotel.

The hotel suites donated to Pfost and his aide will have equipment such as a special bed and any other items he needs--a gift from the American Abbey Home Care Co.

To travel between the hotel and Irvine Valley College, where he studies economics, accounting and computers, Pfost gets a ride from the Consolidated Transportation Service Agency. The rides are a gift from the Orange County Transit District.

Those donations, in addition to $12,400, were gifts of time and money by faculty, staff and students at the Irvine school.

“I certainly hope God is as blissful to you as he has been to me,” Pfost wrote in a letter thanking friends.

Pfost, 48, lost all his possessions when the arson fire destroyed his Irvine apartment. The Idaho native, who became paralyzed in a truck collision in 1981, was in school at the time.