‘I feel lost’: Ben Cabildo watched his Silver Lake home burn on Ring camera

Ben Cabildo didn’t think much of the smoke he saw around 1 p.m. Friday. It looked far away from the dream house he and his wife built on the shores of Silver Lake in 2008.

But two hours later, a Spokane County Sheriff’s deputy was banging on his door.

“So we rushed to get some of our necessities and our two dogs and went to our car and drove,” Cabildo said. “It’s a good thing, because five minutes later we wouldn’t be able to get through the road.”

“We couldn’t see. It was all smoke and fire on both sides of the road.”

As Cabildo and his wife, Joyce, fled down the single road out of their neighborhood, they watched their home burn on their Ring camera.

“It was so hard,” Cabildo said. “I was driving and I was watching my phone and it was just hard to … it was just hard to see the house burning.”

Cabildo has been a community organizer and activist for decades. He founded the Asian Hispanic African Native American business association and created Unity in the Community, an annual event that brings a variety of communities together as one.

He and his wife, who is a retired nurse, spent years saving to buy a lakefront property. When they finally bought one just up the road from Silver Lake Bible Camp, it was a dream come true. They spent years working on their forever home.

“It was a dream house for us because we worked very hard for many, many years to try to be able to afford the house that we liked,” he said.

After the couple’s daughter, Sableu, died of cancer in 2014, the Cabildos built her an eternal garden on the property.

“It’s kind of devastating,” Cabildo said of the loss. “One day it’s there, the next day it’s gone.”

After braving walls of flames that reminded Cabildo of his time serving in Vietnam, the couple escaped the fire zone and went to a family member’s home in Spokane.

The couple had started a Facebook group for their neighbors years ago in hopes of creating a tightknit community. All these years later, the group of neighbors is leaning on each other after losing everything, Cabildo said.

“We plan to gather together once we’re able to go through the property and try to support one another,” Cabildo said.

Saturday morning, Cabildo said he was overwhelmed and struggling to comprehend the devastation.

“You have this feeling of, what are we going to do now?” Cabildo said. “We’re just lost … I feel lost.”