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Vancouver Canucks staff find woman who saved his life

Nadia Popovici and Brian “Red” Hamilton shared a moment in their first home game for the Seattle Kraken in late October, but it wasn’t until January that both realized the significance of the moment.

Hamilton, assistant equipment manager for the visiting Vancouver Canucks, sat on the bench, and Popovici sat near the glass panel behind him.

Like many fans, she spends most of the game banging on glass, trying to get his attention. Unlike many fans, she has a reason to do so beyond the action on the ice.

“She put her phone on the glass and it said, ‘The mole on the back of your neck is cancer,'” Hamilton told reporters on a call with Zoom on Saturday.

He didn’t know how to react.

Hamilton said: “It blew me away, so I just shrugged and continued. “I feel like I really don’t give her the time of day.”

But her messages stuck with him. The next morning, back in Vancouver after a long trip, Hamilton asked his wife if he had a mole on his neck. Then he asked the team doctor.

Within a week, the mole was removed and sent for biopsy. Turns out Popovici was right. This mole is a malignant melanoma, and because it was found early, Hamilton did not have cancer.

“She extended my life,” he said.

For his part, Popovici did not know that any of this had happened until Saturday, when the Vancouver Canucks posted a letter from Hamilton on the team’s social media accounts.

The letter is Hamilton’s attempt to find “a very special person” who changed his life.

It took about two hours for Canucks fans, Kraken fans, and those in the broader hockey community to find Popovici. It would probably take less time if she hadn’t slept most of the morning.

Popovici told CTV News Vancouver: “I work at a crisis line and I worked through New Year’s Eve. “So I got home very late. And so I overslept in all this.”

She wakes up to a call from her mother, who tells her to check Kraken’s Twitter account. That’s where she saw Hamilton’s letter.

“I couldn’t believe they were looking for me and he heard my little message on my phone and he checked it and everything was fine,” Popovici said. “It’s an unbelievable story.”

She said she was particularly excited to learn about Hamilton’s side of the story, because she struggled with the implications of his response.

Popovici said: “I regretted it after I put my phone on Plexiglas. “I thought, maybe, you know, it’s just kind of inappropriate for me. I tried to do it, as sensibly as possible. I made sure no one else was actually looking. or around.”

“Mom and I talked about it after the game and for a couple of weeks after that, and we thought, you know, there’s a chance he knew about it and he just didn’t want to be reminded.”

She says she realizes she probably looks like a badass, all decked out in Kraken’s suit, so in hindsight it’s no surprise he doesn’t know right. how to react.

“I understand why he reacted like that,” she said. “He has no regrets.”

Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Hamilton said he’s “delighted” that Popovici has been identified.

“I really wanted her to know that her perseverance and everything she did was valued,” he said. “I’m glad she knows, because she needs to know.”

The couple had the opportunity to share another moment together on Saturday night. Before the game against Kraken in Seattle, the Canucks shared a photo of a meeting between Hamilton and Popovici.

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