Players, staff focus on homes; next game up in air

The Chargers' Qualcomm Stadium serves as a shelter for thousands of people who were evacuated due to wildfires. AP

Instead of spending Monday night focusing on this weekend's scheduled home game against the Houston Texans, Chargers general manager A.J. Smith was preoccupied with a more pressing issue: how to fit a lifetime of memories into three family cars.

Smith and his family are among the nearly 500,000 individuals who've been forced to leave their homes because of the wildfires that are racing through San Diego County. He thought he was prepared for the situation after getting through the devastating wildfires of 2003 unscathed. His wife, Susan, organized their important papers and family photos after those fires, so there was no sense of panic when his neighborhood was ordered to evacuate.

Then, Smith walked into the room where his family keeps most of its sports memorabilia. He looked at the jerseys, trophies and honors from his son's standout career as a wide receiver at Youngstown State and his daughter's tenure as an honorable mention All-America volleyball player at Cortland State (N.Y.). Then he glanced at the keepsakes he gathered during his time with the Buffalo Bills, who made four consecutive Super Bowl runs during his time as a scout and personnel executive with them. At one point he became overwhelmed.

"That was the hardest," Smith said Tuesday morning while preparing to leave for Arizona, where the Chargers will conduct practices tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. "Your first priority is your family and make sure everyone is OK. We were in good shape with that. Susan did a great job or organizing and storing things. She's the general manager of the Smith household, I'm just a scout. But we just happen to have a lot of memorabilia in a big room -- scrapbooks, trophies, honors, helmets, jerseys -- and when I went in there it was tough. Those are hard decisions to make because you can't take everything from A-Z."

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