Gary Hall Jr. won 10 Olympic medals in the water. Then he lost them in the Palisades fire

Gary Hall Jr. didn’t think anything of the small, off-colored cloud he saw from inside the kitchen of his Pacific Palisades home Tuesday morning. Then they drove down to his sister’s house, where Hall said he has been “taking inventory of everything that’s just happened.” “You’ve got fight-or-flight adrenaline response, so we were pretty wide-eyed and energetic for 24 hours,” said Hall, who blogged for The Times during the 2008 and 2010 Olympics. “I’m too proud to ask for help, but my worldly possessions right now are the clothes that I was wearing and a toothbrush that I bought yesterday,” Hall said. And relaunch the business elsewhere.” As for where he might go to start over, Hall said, “I haven’t had time to think about it.” Hall knows so many others who are in similar situations, in particular the families whose children he taught to swim in his backyard pool.