Nadia Popovici stored transferring her eyes from the hockey recreation to the again of Brian Hamilton’s neck.

Mr. Hamilton, an assistant apparatus supervisor for the Vancouver Canucks, had a small mole there. It measured about two centimeters and used to be irregularly formed and red-brown in colour — imaginable traits of a cancerous mole, indicators that Ms. Popovici had discovered to identify whilst volunteering at hospitals as a nursing assistant.

Perhaps he already knew? However if this is the case, why used to be the mole nonetheless there? She concluded that Mr. Hamilton didn’t know.

“I wish to inform him,” Ms. Popovici, 22, instructed her folks on the Oct. 23 N.H.L. recreation between the Canucks and the Seattle Kraken on the Local weather Pledge Area in Seattle.

Ms. Popovici typed a message on her telephone and waited for the sport to finish. After waving a number of occasions, she in spite of everything drew Mr. Hamilton’s consideration, and positioned her telephone in opposition to the plexiglass.

“The mole at the again of your neck is perhaps cancerous. Please pass see a physician!” the message learn, with the phrases “mole,” “most cancers” and “physician” coloured shiny pink.

Mr. Hamilton stated he appeared on the message, rubbed the again of his neck and stored strolling, considering, “Neatly, that’s bizarre.”

Ms. Popovici stated she regretted the message and concept on the time, “Perhaps that used to be irrelevant of me to convey up.”

After the sport, Mr. Hamilton went house and requested his spouse if she may just spot the mole. She may just. He requested the staff physician if it used to be worrisome. It used to be. Then after he had it got rid of, he waited for the biopsy effects to peer if the fan sitting at the back of the staff’s bench were proper.

Certainly, Ms. Popovici used to be right kind, and she or he had simply stored his lifestyles.

“She took me out of a sluggish fireplace,” Mr. Hamilton stated at a information convention on Saturday, his voice quavering every now and then. “And the phrases out of the physician’s mouth had been if I neglected that for 4 to 5 years, I wouldn’t be right here.”

In particular, docs later instructed him, it used to be type-2 malignant melanoma, a kind of pores and skin most cancers that, as it used to be detected early, may well be simply got rid of and handled.

“With melanoma, identical to many different cancers, the good fortune of the remedy or the remedy is frequently dependent at the level of illness — and the earlier you in finding one thing, the simpler it’s,” stated Dr. Ashwani Rajput, the director of the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Most cancers Heart.

Mr. Hamilton recalled the physician telling him, “I’m going to diagnose you with most cancers and I’m going to remedy you of most cancers in the similar telephone name.”

As soon as he knew he used to be positive, Mr. Hamilton requested the Canucks franchise to lend a hand him in finding the girl he described as “a hero.”

Mr. Hamilton wrote a letter that used to be posted at the staff’s Twitter account on Saturday that stated: “To this lady I’m looking for, you modified my lifestyles, and now I need to in finding you to mention THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH! Drawback is, I don’t know who you’re or the place you’re from.”

It took not up to 3 hours to search out Ms. Popovici, who were drowsing at her house in Tacoma, Wash., that afternoon after running in a single day as a disaster intervention specialist at a suicide prevention hotline.

She aroused from sleep to texts and overlooked calls from her mom, Yukyung Nelson. “I believe she used to be simply stunned,” Ms. Nelson stated.

Ms. Popovici, who had already deliberate to wait the sport on Saturday between the Canucks and Kraken in Seattle, used to be invited by way of each groups to fulfill Mr. Hamilton.

He had simply completed a information convention about what had took place. Relating to Ms. Popovici, he instructed newshounds, “My mother desires her to understand that she loves her.”

Later that afternoon, he repeated the message to Ms. Popovici in individual.

“It used to be the sweetest factor whilst you had been speaking about your mother,” she instructed him as they met correctly for the primary time.

On the recreation, each groups offered Ms. Popovici a mixed $10,000 scholarship to make use of for clinical college bills.

“Some persons are announcing this isn’t even going to be a drop within the bucket, however believe me, it appears like the whole thing,” she stated. “I’m in point of fact simply so thankful.”

She watched the sport from the similar seat the place she had noticed the mole. The whole thing, she concept, had long past proper that day: A long run clinical pupil were sitting shut sufficient to a staff bench the place an assistant apparatus supervisor used to be, fortunately, now not dressed in a jacket big enough to hide the cancerous mole on his neck.

“This whole revel in has been so uncommon,” Ms. Popovici stated. “And I can simply cherish it.”