Calabasas - December 2005

By Juliana Bolden

Overhaulin' co-host and Fanta soda spokesperson Adrienne Janic saw helicopters "dropping stuff" on her West Hills Canyon home on the news as this year's Topanga Canyon fire blazed. "It's amazing how the fire got." Janic says. "My whole yard is torched."

Most heartbreaking, she says, was that authorities would not even let her grab a few pictures. "Clothes, furniture-that's all replaceable," she explains, "photographs my parents gave to me? You can't replace those things." Fortunately, the West Hills Canyon homes were saved. "The fire guys did an amazing job. Not a single home was lost."

Janic herself has come away unscathed during a few near misses on TLC's Overhaulin', part prank-series a la Punk'd and part automobile-fixer-upper reality show. "We've been lucky not being caught," she says.

"My first episode, the guy got so upset with me, his face turned," Janic recalls. "'He was screaming at me so much he was spitting." in enother episode, she was "all mic'd up" and her "wires fell out."

"I grabbed the wires and shoved them down my pants," she recalls. "I'm thinking, Oh great, the "Jig is up!" When they gave his car back, Janic asked the participant if he saw the wires fall. He had no clue. 'He goes, 'My wife taught me never to look below a. woman's waist.' ", Janic says with a laugh. "I lucked out!"