(p. B9) Nadia Popovici kept shifting her eyes from the hockey game to the back of Brian Hamilton’s neck.
Mr. Hamilton, an assistant equipment manager for the Vancouver Canucks, had a small mole there. It measured about two centimeters and was irregularly shaped and red-brown in color — possible characteristics of a cancerous mole, signs that Ms. Popovici had learned to spot while volunteering at hospitals as a nursing assistant.
Maybe he already knew? But if so, why was the mole still there? She concluded that Mr. Hamilton did not know.
“I need to tell him,” Ms. Popovici, 22, told her parents at the Oct. 23 [2021] N.H.L. game between the Canucks and the Seattle Kraken at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle.
Ms. Popovici typed a message on her phone and waited for the game to end. After waving several times, she finally drew Mr. Hamilton’s attention, and placed her phone against the plexiglass.
“The mole on the back of your neck is possibly cancerous. Please go see a doctor!” the message read, with the words “mole,” “cancer” and “doctor” colored bright red.
Mr. Hamilton said he looked at the message, rubbed the back of his neck and kept walking, thinking, “Well, that’s weird.”
. . .
Indeed, Ms. Popovici was correct, and she had just saved his life.
. . .
Specifically, doctors later told him, it was type-2 malignant melanoma, a type of skin cancer that, because it was detected early, could be easily removed and treated.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story was updated Jan. 4, 2022, and has the title “Hockey Fan Spots Cancerous Mole at Game and Delivers a Lifesaving Note.”)