Oakland fire exposes rift over naming transgender victims
SAN FRANCISCO — Feral Pines proved to be as complex in death as she was in life as friends and family struggled this week to settle on the correct name to remember the victim of the Oakland warehouse party fire killed along with 35 others.
Pines, a 29-year-old transgender woman who recently moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, was born in Connecticut in 1987. Relatives largely knew her as Riley, which she asked them to call her after she graduated from college.