Nadia Popovici found herself greatly distracted while attending a Vancouver Canucks game.
The hockey fan, who volunteers at hospitals as a nursing assistant as she prepares for medical school, noticed a mole on the back of Brian Hamilton's neck. The assistant equipment manager didn't know he had the discolored 2 cm mole but was alerted thanks to Popovici's quick thinking.
At first, she was concerned it was inappropriate to make a comment about the growth while Hamilton was working at the game. Still, she worried about what might happen if she didn't. Her instinct was correct, as Hamilton would come to learn.
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Nadia Popovici couldn't ignore her gut telling her to alert Brian Hamilton to the mole on his neck.
"I need to tell him," Nadia recalled telling her parents at the October 23 NHL game between the Vancouver Canucks and the Seattle Kraken at the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, per The New York Times.
Nadia typed a message on her phone. Once the game ended, she was able to get over to the plexiglass. She tried to wave Hamilton down to get his attention. It took a while, but she got his attention, then placed her phone against the plexiglass.
"The mole on the back of your neck is possibly cancerous. Please go see a doctor!" she wrote in the message, with the words "mole," "cancer," and "doctor" in bright red. Hamilton read the message, rubbed his neck, and walked away, causing Nadia to worry she'd handled the situation inappropriately.
Hamilton mentioned it to his partner, who encouraged him to see a doctor. He asked the team doctor about it, who told him he needed to have it removed. He followed up and did so shortly thereafter.
Nadia's instincts were correct. After a biopsy, Hamilton learned the mole was cancerous.
"She took me out of a slow fire," he said in a press conference.
"And the words out of the doctor's mouth were if I ignored that for four to five years, I wouldn't be here."
The mole was a stage 2 malignant melanoma. Because it was detected early, removal was all that was necessary.
"I'm going to diagnose you with cancer and I'm going to cure you of cancer in the same phone call," Hamilton recalled his doctor telling him.
Hamilton wanted to find the fan responsible and thank her for speaking up. He used the team's Twitter account to put out an open letter.
"To this woman I am trying to find, you changed my life, and now I want to find you to say THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH! Problem is, I don’t know who you are or where you are from," he wrote in part.
At the time, Nadia was home napping after working overnight as a crisis intervention specialist at a suicide prevention hotline. When she woke up, she had texts and calls from people telling her about the post. She learned she was invited to the following game, which she had already planned on attending, and was asked to meet the man she saved.
It was an emotional moment when the two did meet. Hamilton relayed a message of love and appreciation from his mother to Nadia. At the game, both teams presented her with a combined $10,000 scholarship to use toward her medical school expenses.
"Some people are saying this is not even going to be a drop in the bucket, but trust me, it feels like everything," she said.
"I'm really just so grateful."
