A Special Young Lady Spends a Special Night With Lakers, Jack Nicholson

I was at restaurant a month or so ago when I first learned about 14-year-old Samantha Naanouh (pronounced Na-new) and her battle with cancer.  Her sister Cynthia is a bartender at the Derby and her mother Mereille (pronounced Me-ray) and other sister Natalie are waitresses at the Arcadia landmark.

I met Cynthia through two friends I was with, Al Snow and Greg DeSmet, who knew her and her mother and sister when they all worked at the Golden Spur in Glendora. Cynthia told me about Samantha and about how much she loved the Lakers.

Al offered to donate his four season tickets if I would take Samantha, Cynthia and their father Sammy to an upcoming game. As a Los Angeles sportswriter for some 40 years–first with the old Herald Examiner and then 30-plus years with the Times--I knew how, through contacts, to get into the hotspots at Staples Center.

Without making any promises, I told Cynthia I’d do my best to make it a special night for Samantha. After eventually settling on a Feb. 22 game against the Atlanta Hawks, I got busy.

Through Jeanie Buss, the Lakers’ executive vice president and possibly the nicest person in the world, I arranged to get four passes for the exclusive Chairman’s Room.

I then contacted my good friends, Bill Sharman and his wife Joyce, to see if they would donate their two 11th row, center-court seats so Samantha could sit with her father in a prime location.

The Sharmans have such good seats because Bill was the Lakers’ coach when they won a modern professional sports record 33 games in a row during the 1971-72 season on their way to an NBA championship. Sharman is one of three men in the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. John Wooden and Lenny Wilkens are the other two.

We now had enough tickets for Cynthia to invite her roommates to the game as well.

After meeting at the Derby, I rode to the game with Cynthia, Samantha and their father.  During the ride, I learned more about Samantha. I discovered just how delightful she is, and I also learned that, at 5-foot-9, she is a budding basketball star. We also talked about Samantha’s ordeal. For four months, doctors had no idea what was wrong. They only knew Samantha was terribly sick.

Samantha’s parents, who live in San Dimas, became desperate and eventually took her to Cedar-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. That’s where it was discovered she had lymphoma, a type of cancer. She was admitted on Dec. 23 and spent a week there. She also began chemotherapy treatments.

Her final treatment is scheduled for Feb. 24. The good news is she is now cancer free.

So things were upbeat as we made our way through L.A. traffic toward Staples Center, unsure what we were in store for.

Before the game, with passes in hand, Samantha, Cynthia, Sammy and I went to the Chairman's Room, where Samantha talked with Jeanie Buss, Linda Rambis and others connected to the Lakers.

After arriving at her seat location about 15 minutes before tipoff, Samantha was able to shake hands with Laker announcers Joel Meyers and Stu Lantz as they walked by.

The highlight of the night came at halftime. In the Chairman’s Room, she hit the jackpot. First off, she got a picture with Jack Nicholson and then, in order, Andy Garcia, Bill O’Reilly, Maria Shriver, and local broadcaster Bill Macdonald, who is also a cancer survivor.

Nicholson rarely poses for pictures, but after hearing about what Samantha had gone through, he gladly accommodated her. I told Garcia about the situation and he came and found us. O’Reilly and Shriver both readily agreed to pose with Samantha.

We had found Nicholson sitting alone at a table in a small enclosed smoking area inside the Chairman’s Room. After Samantha got her picture with Jack, her father Sammy went inside to have a cigarette and ended up sitting next to him.

When a stranger approached Jack to invite him to an event, Sammy could see Jack was uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, Mr. Nicholson doesn’t accept invitations from people he doesn’t know,” Sammy politely told the stranger.

Suddenly, Sammy had a new best friend.

After the game, another stranger approached Sammy and said, “You’re Jack Nicholson’s friend.” He then handed him a business card. This stranger owned a restaurant in Downey and wanted Sammy to bring his friend Jack to his restaurant.

We all had a good laugh over that one.

On our way back to Arcadia following the Lakers 104-80 victory, Cynthia called her sister Natalie to tell her about our adventures. There were more laughs as she attempted to describe it all.

“This is a night that Samantha and I will never forget,” Cynthia told me after getting out of the car to hug me after we got back to the Derby parking lot.

It was a night I will never forget either. It re-established something I have learned over the years – doing nice things for nice people feels really good.