The Day I Fell in Love with L.A.

January 26, 2020, was going to be a great day. I was excited to pick up my oldest daughter from the LAX (airport). She was flying in from Texas after playing in a basketball tournament, and since my birthday was on the next day, my kids and I planned to meet up with my sister to celebrate. However, the mood changed very early that day. Kobe Bryant, along with his daughter and seven others, died in that horrific helicopter crash. They were headed to Kobe’s Academy so his daughter and her teammates could play in a basketball game.

I witnessed the entire city of Los Angeles go in a state of shock. Everybody seemed dazed in total disbelief. That day, I drove around while listening to sports radio only to hear celebrities emotionally breaking down. Everyone shared their stories on how Kobe Bryant impacted their lives. I had no choice but to be absorbed by the moment of such deep emotion.

Before then, I had lived in Southern California for almost 17 years, but I couldn’t say that I thought of it as home. Probably, it was because I bounced around from one place to another since high school, and I lived in eleven different states. Strangely, the only city that I felt loyal to was one that I never lived in, Detroit, Michigan. I grew up a Piston fan during the “Bad Boy” era, so at the time, I wasn’t a Laker fan. Also, Kobe Bryant was never my favorite player, but I did learn to respect his Mamba mentality.

All of that changed on that specific January 26. Maybe it was the timing. My wife passed away less than two years before, and she was 41, which happened to be the same age as Kobe Bryant. The grieving that my friends were going through seemed all too familiar as they shared with me how his death affected them. I was also incredibly moved by how Los Angelinos came together as if they formed an enormous support group for each other. They organized these massive vigils and would leave invaluable and deeply sentimental memorabilia of Kobe to display how much he meant to them. In the end, the pain of Los Angeles became my pain, and the city forever became my home. I now look in the eyes of its people and I know am one of them.