By SEAN JANSSEN

The Union Democrat

The longtime friend of a Copperopolis woman who lost her home, pets and personal belongings Tuesday when her live-in boyfriend set her Little John Road home on fire before taking his own life, said Michelle Pillinini is unlikely to return to Calaveras County after the tragic event.

Dianna Ellis serves as secretary of the Lake County-based Golden Gate Gordon Setter Club of which Pillinini, who owned the home that was destroyed by the fire, is the vice president. She said she and Pillinini have been friends for about 25 years.

During a phone interview Wednesday, Ellis said Pillinini is coping with a lot after losing, in essence, everything she had.

"Her whole life and her memories, and her photographs, she's lost everything," Ellis said. "She's distraught but she has her life and has to be thankful for that."

Among what was lost were four dogs and two cats that neighbors said Pillinini had raised. She and her late husband, Harry, had reportedly bred Gordon setters.

Ellis said she also knew James Arno Watt, 46, identified in a Calaveras County Sheriff's Department press release Wednesday as the man who set the house aflame before he killed himself. Authorities had previously provided an incorrect middle name for Watt and estimated his age to be in his 50s.

Watt and Pillinini met at his place of employment about five years ago, Ellis said, a feed store in Copperopolis that is owned by the man's sister.

She would not say how or when the relationship soured but that Pillinini had asked Watt to leave the home.

"Michelle expected that he would vacate her property. She asked him to leave and had no idea anything like this would happen," Ellis said. "I never thought he'd go this far. I thought he'd be the gentleman that we first saw when we had met him."

Pillinini lived in the Bay Area before moving to Copperopolis in the last years of her husband Harry's life. Neighbors and friends said she had been suffering from a loss of her vision in recent years. Ellis said she had no family in the Mother Lode area and told her she had "no plans to return to the area at this point in time. I would strongly doubt that."

Neighbors said Pillinini left to stay with a relative in Yuba City after the fire and was receiving support from friends and family in that area.

"Michelle has an incredible amount of people who love her and have cared for her for years and years and years," Ellis said. "We're all there for her and want to give her her space but also be there to comfort her when she needs it, too."

Tuesday's fire caused $500,000 in damage, according to a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection report. The home and two vehicles were completely destroyed.

Five engines, a dozer, air attack, two tankers, a helicopter and a hand crew responded from Cal Fire and Copperopolis Fire sent three engines, an ambulance and a water tender to the scene where firefighting efforts were limited to air attack for much of the blaze because Watt stood on the home's porch with a rifle.

According to the sheriff's department release, a hostage negotiation team had been called in to help handle the incident but Watt took his own life just prior to the team's arrival. A department spokeswoman said no motive had been established for the arson-suicide but that the case remains under investigation.

Contact Sean Janssen at sjanssen@ uniondemocrat.com or 736-8097.