A woman who grew up in Marin and worked at an ice cream shop in Fairfax is among the victims of a warehouse fire in Oakland that killed at least 36 people, authorities confirmed Monday.
“I’m DJing in Oakland in support of Golden Donna’s West Coast tour this Friday 12/2,” wrote Chelsea Faith Dolan in a post on her Cherushii Facebook page on Nov. 29. Cherushii is the name that Dolan, 33, performs under as an electronic music producer, event promoter and radio host.
The show business publication Variety reported that Cherushii was among the bands scheduled to perform Friday during an underground dance party for the electronic music label 100% Silk. The event took place in a warehouse known as the “Ghost Ship,” which was inhabited by an artists’ collective.
Authorities identified Dolan as a resident of San Francisco.
On Sunday, Sabrina May Dolan, Chelsea’s sister, told the Daily Mail that her sister was performing at the party when the fire broke out and that she had not been heard from since. Neither she nor other family members could be reached for comment on Monday.
“We had a gathering of her friends here at the store yesterday,” said Ray Martin, owner of the Fairfax Scoop, the ice cream shop in downtown Fairfax. “We’re all assuming the worst since no one has heard from her. So we all gathered at the store as an informal memorial.”
Martin said Dolan grew up in Marin, and he hired her soon after she graduated from high school, when she was 18 or 19. She worked at the shop “on and off” for 10 years, Martin said.
“She was just a wonderful person,” Martin said. “She was very sweet, very empathetic, upbeat, artistic — just a person you really don’t want to have this happen to. She’ll be very missed.”
According to Dolan’s SoundCloud account, she “began experimenting with electronics as a teenager, which led to playing live techno and house at underground raves in the 2000s,” and she had been “working as a live performer, producer, DJ, and remixer for over a decade.”
Sandra Wasson, general manager at KALX-FM, the UC Berkeley radio station, said Dolan worked as a volunteer there hosting a show on Thursday nights. Wasson said she didn’t know Dolan well because the station has more than 250 volunteers.
In July, Dolan’s picture appeared on the cover of the “Chicago Reader,” illustrating a story on an event spotlighting the under-recognized contributions of women in electronic music.
Celebrating the work of another female producer of electronic music in that piece, Dolan wrote, “In a culture as supposedly forward-thinking as electronic music, women are still so often invisible.”
Stories about other Ghost Ship live-work warehouse fire victims are here. For ongoing coverage of the tragedy go to this page, which has the latest stories followed by earlier coverage.
