NEWSRicki Lake Overjoyed After Stranger Recovers Lost Family Photos From Fire: 'It Makes Me So Happy'
Ricki Lake’s lost family photos were returned by a stranger who found them after the L.A. wildfires.
Dec. 31 2025, Published 6:00 a.m. ET
Ricki Lake faced the heartbreaking loss of cherished family photos during the January wildfires in Los Angeles. Little did she know that those precious images hadn't been lost forever.
Ricki Lake reacted with joy after her lost photos were found.
“The craziest thing happened. I can't even process [it],” the actress and former talk show host shared on social media, struggling to find the words. "My words are not coming."
Lake, whose home was devastated in the Palisades Fire, expressed her initial despair, stating, “I lost everything.”
But then came an unexpected twist.
Friends alerted Lake over the weekend to an intriguing post from a woman named Patty Scanlon. “It was a screenshot of someone on Instagram or Facebook trying to find me,” Lake recalled.
The message read: “Does anyone have a way to get in touch with Ricki Lake? I found these photos at a freaking flea market.”
Lake couldn’t believe her eyes.
A stranger discovered the photos at a local flea market.
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"These pictures are so priceless to me," she exclaimed. "They would be anyway, Patty, but the fact that I lost all of these images in the fire in January… I thought they were gone forever. I had made peace. It was such a heartache to come to terms with the fact that those memories were no longer in front of me."
Thanks to classics like Hairspray, Cry-Baby, and Serial Mom, Lake’s recognizable face made it easy for Scanlon to identify her in a box of photographs, including several images of Lake with her son as a baby. Scanlon had purchased the box for just $20.
The actress thanked the woman who returned the priceless memories.
“When I got home and started looking through these,” Scanlon said, “all of a sudden I was like, ‘Wait a minute, I feel like I know her. That’s Ricki Lake!’ Then I found a letter. ‘Thank you for all the gifts for Milo. Here's some of his recent photos.’ It made me think, ‘Oh, this person must have had an estate sale?’ So I Googled and saw that Ricki's son’s name is Milo.”
Discovering Lake's tragic loss, Scanlon's heart raced as she thought, “I gotta contact her. This is so exciting to find these. I can't believe what a miracle.”
Ricki Lake lost her dream home in the L.A. wildfires in January 2025.
Lake, who shares Milo and younger son Owen with ex-husband Rob Sussman, expressed her profound gratitude. “I really cannot thank you enough for your generosity,” she said. “Making the effort to find me and the fact that I'm going to get something back that I thought was lost forever is really…it makes me so happy.”
She added that the encounter left her with “such a beautiful feeling about the human race.”
