“I’m proud that he turned out in the end like the person that he did,” Carol Smith tells PEOPLE about her son, Randy Miod

Carol Smith remembers the last-ever phone conversation she had with her son, Randall “Randy” Miod, a 55-year-old Malibu, Calif., resident, on Tuesday, Jan. 7 — the day the Pacific Palisades fire broke out.

“He would always call me anytime there was a fire coming,” Smith, of Banning, tells PEOPLE. “He was almost in tears on Tuesday when I talked to him, and he said, ‘Mom, there’s another fire in the Palisades. I can see the smoke.’ I said, ‘Randy, grab your cat and go to a shelter. Don’t make me worry.’ ”

She adds, “I’ve worried so much about him because in all the fires that he’s been through, he never evacuated any of them. He always stayed. He always felt that he could hose the house down with his hose.”

Miod is one of at least 24 people who died in the ongoing L.A. fires that have also left 23 missing. 

Smith adds that later, he called again and left a voicemail, reiterating their last conversation together. “The last thing he said to me was, ‘Pray for the Palisades and pray for Malibu, and I love you.’ “ She explains, “He called me at home and I wasn’t here, and he left a message on my phone, the same thing that we talked about when he called me on my cellphone.. And I have that message, and I will keep it forever.”

Smith says authorities found her son, who apparently died the following day, Wednesday, Jan. 8, behind his Malibu home as he was trying to protect it.

“I don’t think that he ever really knew what hit him,” she says. “The detectives said that this kind of a fire, or any kind of a fire, just sucks the wind out of you… They did the autopsy, and he had enough lung tissue left to determine that he died from smoke inhalation and thermal heat.”

Miod was the only child of Smith and her ex-husband. She remembers her son as an avid surfer and skateboarder in his youth. “He used to cut classes in high school to go to the beach,” Smith says. “I had to hide his board at one point because he was spending more time at the beach than he was spending in school.”

In his 20s, Miod moved to Malibu and rented a studio apartment that was attached to the home that he later purchased and became known as the “Crab Shack.”

“He had kind of an open door policy there,” Smith tells PEOPLE about her son. “He had so many friends that came and went from there, and you know, he partied a lot, and that was the lifestyle that suited him perfectly. He was the party.”

A firefighter battles the Palisades fire as homes burn along Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu. Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times via Getty

His mother also says that Miod was a born-again Christian, describing him as handsome, funny and smart. “He went to Santa Monica City College and got a degree in photography. He did some professional photography. He was flown up to Canada by Pamela Anderson, and she bought property up there that she was considering at the time, and she wanted Randy to go up and take pictures of it.”

She adds, ”He knew Ryan O’Neal’s son, Redmond. He knew everybody, he knew all the celebrities. But to him, they were just ordinary people like him. He was not starstruck by any of that and he treated everybody the same. He was a very unpretentious guy. He was very humble. He was not materialistic in any way.”

Miod was also a beloved member of the Malibu community, according to Smith, saying, “He loved life, he loved people. He was like a people magnet. Everybody in Malibu knew him. I mean, he’s beyond a legend there. He’s almost iconic.”

“I just talked with a friend of his today who said that they will probably be writing songs about him. He will probably be at Duke’s, that’s a very famous restaurant in Malibu. They’ll probably have a huge picture of him up on the wall with all the other legendary surfers in Malibu,” she continues.

Randall Miod. courtesy Chris Wizner

The surfer had been struggling in the last year when he lost his job, broke his finger that required surgery and had to say goodbye to his beloved pet cat who died. His home sat on the Pacific Coast Highway where other vehicles would come around the corner and hit the residence and Miod’s cars. 

“I told him, ‘Sell that house and move’ because [of] the fires [and] the cars that were always being destroyed,” Smith recalls. “I even told him, not too many months ago, ‘Randy, sell that house, take the money and buy a place somewhere else where you’ll be safe, because you’re getting older, and that’s just too much stress.’ But that was his life, he was not going to leave that home, because he had so many good memories there.”

Smith says her son left behind a legacy that included his friends who loved him so much. “He never married and he never had children,” she says. “He always said to me, ‘Mom, I’m waiting for a good Christian woman…’ He’s a kind person who loved kids. There’s not one person that I know that has anything negative to say about him — nobody.”

“So I’m proud that he turned out in the end like the person that he did,” Smith continues.” I’ll have some really good memories of him, starting from day one.”