As a boy growing up in Leningrad, Mark Shterenberg developed a fascination with the way things work—the challenge of taking them apart, the responsibility of putting them back together.
By the time Sputnik was launched in 1957, he had already made up his mind that he would one day use his skills to send objects into space. Once Sterenberg had made up his mind about something, he could not be got to change it.
An engineer, he immigrated with his wife Marina and young daughter in 1980, determined to provide a life for his family unhindered by the anti-Semitism he witnessed in the Soviet Union. They moved first to Chicago and then to Los Angeles in the mid-1980s.
“He was very smart, very dedicated, and had an amazing work ethic,” said his granddaughter Tatiana Bedi, 29, of San Francisco. “I don't think he took a day off. He got up every day and went to work to make a living for his family.
Shterenberg died in the Palisades fire at his home, his family said. He is 80 years old.
Shterenberg worked as an engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Hughes Aerospace Corporation, his family said.
In 1993, he and Marina bought their home in Pacific Palisades. A former university wrestler, Shterenberg was fit and strong in his older years and still dragged himself to his roof to fix his family's objections.
Every morning until the last day of his life, he got up at 5 a.m., ran three miles, and took a dip in their pool, which was always unheated, because Shterenberg did not believe in wasting money on such foolish things as heating the pool.
On the outside he could be gruff, gruff and incredibly stubborn, Paddy said, “but inside, he was a very gentle, very loving person. He loved his wife – my grandmother – and my mother and my brother and I very much.
In the days leading up to the fire, Paddy's grandmother was staying with Paddy's mother, Maya Amans, at her home in Santa Monica because she was ill.
When the Palisades fire broke out on Jan. 7, Bedi said Shterenberg told his family that flames were on a nearby street shortly before noon. Their frantic calls and text messages asking him to vacate went unanswered.
Around 9:30 p.m., he texted his wife that the house was safe. Some two hours later, neighbors got word from him that flames were approaching, Paddy said. This is the last known information of Shterenberg.
His family spent the next few desperate days calling hospitals and evacuation centers, hoping he had escaped. On Jan. 11, they were notified that investigators had found human remains in the rubble of her home along with Sterenberg's glasses, Paddy said.
“We don't know why he didn't choose to leave,” Paddy said. “We'll never have answers about that. But in my heart, I feel like he's trying to protect everything he's built for his family here.
