Social media letter connects Canucks staffer with woman who saved his life

Nadia Popovici and Brian "Red" Hamilton shared a moment during the inaugural home game for the Seattle Kraken in late October, but it took until January for them both to realize the moment's significance.

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

Like many fans, she spent much of the game banging on the glass, trying to get his attention. Unlike many fans, she had a reason to do so that went beyond the action on the ice.

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

He wasn't sure how to react.

"It threw me off, so I kind of just shrugged and kept going," Hamilton said. "I felt like I really didn't give her the time of day."

But her message stuck with him. The following morning, back in Vancouver after an extended road trip, Hamilton asked his wife if he had a mole on his neck. Later, he asked the team doctor.

Within a week, the mole had been removed and sent for a biopsy. It turned out that Popovici was right. The mole was a malignant melanoma, and because it had been caught early, Hamilton was cancer-free.

"She extended my life," he said.

For her part, Popovici was unaware 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 was Hamilton's attempt to find "a very special person" who changed his life.

It took about two hours for Canucks fans, Kraken fans and people in the broader hockey community to track down Popovici. It might have taken even less time if she hadn't been asleep for most of the morning.

"I work at a crisis line and I was working over New Year's Eve," Popovici told CTV News Vancouver. "So I got home super late. And so I was sleeping through all of this."

She woke up to a call from her mother, who told her to check the Kraken's Twitter account. That's where she saw Hamilton's letter.

"I could not believe that they were looking for me and that he listened to my little note on my phone and he got it checked out and everything worked out," Popovici said. "It's such an incredible story."

She said she was especially happy to learn Hamilton's side of the story, because she had been wrestling with the meaning of his reaction.

"I kind of regretted it after I put my phone up to the Plexiglas," Popovici said. "I thought, maybe, you know, it was just an inappropriate thing for me to do. I tried to do it in, like, the most sensitive way. I made sure that there were no other people really looking or around."

"Me and my mom talked about it after the game and for several weeks after, and we thought, you know, there was a chance that he already knew about it and he just didn't want to be reminded."

She said she realizes she probably looked like a heckler, all decked out in Kraken gear, so in hindsight it's not surprising that he didn't know how to react.

"I understand why he reacted that way," she said. "He has nothing to be sorry about."

Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Hamilton said he's "thrilled" that Popovici has been identified.

"I really wanted her to know that her persistence and everything she did was taken seriously," he said. "I'm excited that she knows, because she needs to know."

The pair got a chance to share another moment together Saturday night. Ahead of their game against the Kraken in Seattle, the Canucks shared a photo of Hamilton and Popovici's pregame meeting.