Melissa Rivers revealed she saved her late mom Joan Rivers’ Emmy Award before evacuating her home that the Palisades Fire later destroyed.
“To be 100 percent honest, I grabbed my mom’s Emmy, a photo of my dad and a drawing that my mother had done of me and my son,” Melissa shared during an interview with CNN Wednesday.
Joan, who died at age 81 in 2014, won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1990 for her talk show, “The Joan Rivers Show.”
“It’s amazing what you grab. It’s amazing what you take,” Melissa, 56, continued. “I went for a drawing of my mother’s rather than a photo because I know I can find the photos. [The drawing] I can’t replace.”
In addition to taking her mom’s Emmy and a picture with her late dad, Edgar Rosenberg, Melissa went through a “mental checklist” of items that included passports, birth certificates, medication, clothing, cat food and dog food.
“I just was shopping for clothes, and it started to just hit me that we literally have what’s on our back,” she emotionally said.
Melissa reiterated to viewers that the “most important thing” for those evacuating is to have all their “papers” together.
“My heart is so broken, not just for myself, but for everybody going through this,” she said. “It’s a town, and it’s wiped off the map.”
Melissa shared earlier Wednesday that she had lost her home in the Palisades Fire.
“My family and I have safely evacuated and we are deeply grateful to be unharmed. I am heartbroken by the devastation caused by the fires, which have tragically destroyed my home,” she wrote on Instagram.
“I want to express my profound gratitude to the courageous firefighters and first responders who are tirelessly risking their lives to protect our communities and save lives.”
She lived in a 7,048-square-foot, six-bedroom Mediterranean-style home in Santa Monica that she purchased after selling her home in the Pacific Palisades in 2018, per a 2020 Architectural Digest profile.
Melissa joins several other celebrities who have lost homes as a result of the widespread fires across the Los Angeles area.
Eugene Levy, Anna Faris, Miles Teller and Keleigh Teller, Anthony Hopkins, Billy Crystal, John Goodman and Sandra Lee are among some of the stars whose houses burned down over the past few days.
Tori Spelling’s mom, Candy Spelling, had a beachfront home in Malibu that burned to the ground, and she told TMZ she was still “processing this massive loss.”
Paris Hilton also lost her $8.4 million vacation home in Malibu and told her followers that she had to watch it “burn to the ground on live TV.”
Hollywood couple Leighton Meester and Adam Brody’s home in the Pacific Palisades was also destroyed.
Meanwhile, actors like Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, Ben Affleck and Mandy Moore have thankfully had their homes spared despite being in evacuation areas.
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