Check your travel insurance. It is very unlikely to cover transfers between tickets rather than connections, but it is worth checking. Your travel insurance may also have a simple payout for the 15-hour delay. That is not likely to be anywhere near $5,000, but better than nothing.

As an aside, how far before the CA departure did you call to let CA know that you would not make it? While not useful now, some tickets do allow for changes prior to departure. It sounds as though your tickets had no value once the flight had departed.

Don't need to rub it in, but this is important for all those people who post asking how much time they ought to leave when transferring between two tickets. While the greater the time, the better, the risks can be significant and thus 13 hours was not enough.