At 7:12 on a Saturday morning in Pasadena, the old house on Maple Street made a sound like a giant sigh. A crew member eased the final cracked cabinet into the dumpster, and it landed with a hollow wooden thud. Across the driveway, Elena Ruiz watched dust drift through a shaft of sunlight. For three weeks, she and her brother had been clearing the home where their grandmother had lived for nearly half a century. Now the driveway was almost empty—and the dumpster, which had seemed enormous on delivery day, was ready to go.
