'Mayans M.C.' star Richard Cabral shares his loss, his healing from Eaton Fire

ALTADENA, Calif. (KABC) -- Richard Cabral hasn't always had an easy life.

Growing up in East L.A., he was in a gang, he got into drugs, and he went to prison. When he was released, Cabral became a new man.

He also became an actor. It's a career he's been successfully building for about 16 years.

But now, he's building his life back yet again because of the Eaton Fire.

"We had a dining room right here and it was part living room," Cabral said, describing the lot where the home he lived in once stood.

At ABC7's request, Cabral met us there. He and his family lived in one of the more than 6,000 homes destroyed by the Eaton fire.

"I went through all these trials and tribulations and to come out on the other side of it, and then all this work that I did for all these years, for it to be taken away like this, it just sometimes make you think, like, 'Why did I even do it?' or 'God, what are you really trying to tell me?'" Cabral said.

Before the fire hit, Cabral saw the smoke coming. He tried waiting it out, hoping for the best. That was not to be, though, as the flames took ownership of the neighborhood.

"There was no stopping this and really, what I could tell you about that night up in Altadena is that we felt abandoned. There was really no cops here. There was no firemen. And we understand that the winds were 80 to 100 miles an hour that night, but it was really the neighbors just kind of looking out for each other," he said.

Cabral, who we know from many projects, including "Mayans M.C.," "American Crime" and "End of Watch," had recently sold his Altadena house and was renting the one that burned down. The fire took everything they owned and turned it into ashes.

"I think for sure it's my toughest challenge, from making it in Hollywood to going through prison and just going through traumas that I had as a child. But I think it kind of set me up for this in a weird way because it I didn't go through that, then maybe I couldn't really see this out in a good way," he said.

Cabral turned to his art to help heal, writing a poetic interpretation of his experience.

"I think there's a lot of people that are still lost and still broken in our city, and that's why I wrote that piece for them to understand that they're not alone, that we're all going through this together," Cabral said.

He read some of what he wrote for us:

"Los Angeles was burning. We heard the sirens. We seen the chaos. We heard the alarms. We seen the fright. We felt the panic. I was praying that the fire spirits would somehow pass over my home, spare me and family in our worldly possessions, the things we cherished, the things we held close to our heart...I moved to my wife and I held her as she cried. I stood quiet and stared at the scene. My son looked at our burning ruins, trying to understand what it all meant...I stepped on the wreckage of my once home, trying to put the pieces together, trying to put the pieces in order. But there are no pieces and there is no order in a catastrophe," Cabral recited.

Cabral's goal is to turn his poetic expression into a short film and then be able to show it at an event he hopes to make happen. He believes it could be "a day of healing for Angelenos."

Disney is the parent company of FX and this station.