Beloved Ocean Beach ice cream shop temporarily closed after fire

SAN DIEGO — A long-standing Ocean Beach ice cream shop is working to reopen after a fire ravaged the inside of its storefront last month.

Lighthouse Ice Cream — located just steps from the beach — has been a fixture in the coastal San Diego community for nearly three decades. Over the years, the shop has become known for its freshly made waffle cones, and its smell that wafts through the air towards the shore.

The family-run business was established by Carol Ladiges and her late husband Richard in June 1997. Selling ice cream was nothing new for the couple, as Richard was the original owner of a since-closed scoop stand in Ocean Beach, Big Olaf’s, when it opened in the 1980s.

“We loved Ocean Beach, that’s actually where we met and we love the people,” Ladiges told FOX5SanDiego.com. “We had an opportunity to open up Lighthouse Ice Cream and it was great.”

Not much had changed over the decades since Lighthouse Ice Cream first opened its doors except the shop’s photo boards, which were made out of an ever-growing collection of pictures with smiling customers and employees.

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When Richard passed in 2011, Ladiges was dedicated to keep the shop going in the way she had with her husband. Those efforts continued when she passed the torch of managing the day-to-day operations so Ladiges could — as she described it — “semi-retire.”

But, on the morning after Thanksgiving, things took a turn for the worse when one of their freezers malfunctioned, igniting an electrical fire that devastated the inside of the shop.

Anthony Valdivia, a handyman for Lighthouse Ice Cream and the son of its current manager, was shocked to see the damage on the inside of the cherished shop.

“In the moment, it really was devastating,” he said to FOX5SanDiego.com. “When you look in that door, and you saw the entire shop just black, it was pretty hard to see.”

As Valdivia recalled, he had been heading into work with his family — his mom, his wife and son, his sister and her children — around 9:30 a.m. when a neighbor called them to tell them of the fire. By that time, he said the fire had been smoldering for about half an hour.

When he arrived at the store, San Diego Fire-Rescue crews on the scene explained that most of the damage from the fire, which originated in the freezer they call their “dipping cabinet,” was caused by the smoke.

“When I first saw it, I thought the whole thing burned,” he said. “From wall to wall, ceiling to ceiling, the floor, it was all covered in soot. Then, actually getting to go inside … only a certain area burned.”

The rest of the building and neighboring businesses were fortunately unimpacted, and there were no reported injuries to those inside the structure or firefighters.

For Valdivia, however, seeing the inside of the Lighthouse in that condition brought up the memories of grief his family experienced after they lost their own decades-old family business, an upholstery shop, to the 2008 financial crisis and a fire.

“It was tough to see (the damage), it’s a definite hit. There’s a lot of employees here that are kind of wondering what does the future look like? That’s something that weighs on me,” he said. “But sitting with my mom and sitting with Carol, and knowing how much they care … I’m very optimistic.”

Since the fire, the Ocean Beach community has also been a huge support the entire Lighthouse Ice Cream family.

“The outpouring from the community has been just overwhelming,” Valdivia said. “Being with Carol and my mom for the last few days, their spirits have been lifted so much from trying to figure out what to do next — just looking at what the Lighthouse … means to the community.”

Dozens of people — from the firemen that battled the flames who visited the shop when they were younger to long-time patrons who heard of the fire through the grapevine — have reached out to Ladiges, sharing memories and whatever they could pitch in to help the business stay afloat.

“People were sharing stories and feeling sad, because that was kind of their place,” she said, “and they grew up there and the photos on the wall … So everybody was just really sad and shocked, and (asking) ‘How can we help you, please tell us how.'”

Lighthouse Ice Cream started a GoFundMe to collect community donations to help with the rebuild. As of Thursday, the fundraiser garnered about $1,645 towards its goal of $50,000.

For those that would like to donate, the GoFundMe can be found here.

Ladiges is resolute about getting back up and running as fast as they can, albeit with a few changes from when they first opened their doors 26 years ago.

“A lot of things burned in the fire, but for the most part, with the community and the shop in the same location and the same ice cream and everything … it’s going to be the same, but with a little facelift,” she continued.

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A timeline for the Lighthouse’s reopening has not been determined, although they are aiming to be back sometime in the next few months.

In the meantime, Valdivia and Ladiges both said they are exploring other ways to possibly bring their award-winning ice cream and famous waffle cones to people in Ocean Beach, as they still have a good deal of inventory that was untouched by the fire since it was stored elsewhere.

“The future’s bright. It could have been so much worse,” Ladiges said. “I feel like we can just rebuild right in the same place that we’ve always been, so that’s all good … we’ll come back.”

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