Ellen Rudolph and her husband, Steve Lewis, were still trying to repair their Pacific Palisades home and rebuild their lives after last year\u2019s fires when, two months later, the devastating news came. Lewis had Stage 4 lung cancer. <\/p>\n
Chemotherapy and immunotherapy didn\u2019t work, she said, and doctor appointments, therapy and insurance issues took precedence over home repairs. Rudolph, 71, said she struggled to keep up with her husband\u2019s illness and mounting financial responsibilities. Lewis died at their temporary Playa Vista apartment on Oct. 6.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was like a freight train,\u201d Rudolph said. \u201cIt went so fast, we didn\u2019t have time to pull our act together.\u201d<\/p>\n
By January, Rudolph said, she\u2019d received an insurance check and saved some money for repairs at her home. But then, she said, she received a suspicious text message about her PayPal account being used to buy $450 in cryptocurrency. <\/p>\n
She had been so focused on handling emergencies, one tragedy after another, that she clicked on a link in the text in an attempt to put out another potential crisis. Instead, scammers took over her computer and targeted her bank accounts, and before the end of the month, she lost $38,000 meant to fix her home. <\/p>\n
\u201cI felt that I had been managing things pretty well, until the scam,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd then the floor got ripped away from under me completely.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rudolph said she contacted police and her bank, but she was emotionally drained. Not knowing what else to do, she texted her friend, Cantor Chayim Frenkel from her synagogue, Kehillat Israel, in Pacific Palisades. <\/p>\n
\u201cI was a mess, I felt so shameful,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t just the list of tragedies that she\u2019d had to face in a single year, but a sense that she\u2019d somehow let down her family and her late husband by falling for the scam, Rudolph said. <\/p>\n
Frenkel had been an old friend, introduced her to her husband in 1999 and officiated over their wedding in 2012. He was there the day before Lewis died, she said, praying.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told her, \u2018Ellen, I\u2019m not going to accept this, and I\u2019m going to figure this out,\u2019\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The synagogue had already started a fire fund and raised more than a million dollars to help those affected by the 2025 fires in Southern California, Frenkel said. <\/p>\n
Rudolph had not received any help from the fund at that time, but Frenkel said the synagogue was able to give her a $10,000 grant to help fix her home. <\/p>\n