This week's question: "Have you ever met a celebrity, and who was it?
I was at the David Copperfield show at the Pershing with my two brothers. We had floor seats, and he came out to the audience to select someone for his next magic trick…well, he chose me! It involved cards and him making a rose appear at the end. He kissed me on the cheek…I even remember what I was wearing. -Jill Knox
Saw Nat King Cole at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco when I was about 9 (1956 or so), but that’s about it. –Barb Sturgis
I was antiquing with my partner at “Timeless Treasures on O” and there were cameramen and bodyguards, but we couldn’t really figure out why, but we eventually realized that Ke$ha was there filming her show “My Crazy Beautiful Life” as she was performing at the Pershing that night. We ended up joking around with her. After a few jokes they had us sign a waiver so they could use our footage on air. We ended up ready to check out at the same time Ke$ha was, which is when I brought up that I owned a shop she might be into. I had heard she was into “oddities” and the stuff I had at Hunter Gatherer was probably up her alley. Unfortunately, they were unable to go at that time bc they had to do a sound check at Pershing. However, she offered us back-stage tickets to her show in hopes that after her show she could check out my shop after-hours. Her bodyguard took all my info and said our tickets would be waiting at Pershing. Well… we arrived to Pershing and the person helping us asked how/who we got the tickets from. When we said that we met Ke$ha and she was leaving tickets for us, the person didn’t believe us. They couldn’t find the tickets. I tried calling Ke$ha’s friend (we exchanged digits, naturally) but no answer. So we ended up leaving. A bit later we get a call from Ke$sha asking where we were. They had been waiting for us. After a brief discussion, they found out that Pershing had dropped the ball. Maybe next time… -Toby Burnham
Mine is really only famous to me. I met Chuck Colson. Colson was one of Richard Nixon’s attorneys and he ended up in prison for his role in Watergate. In prison, Chuck had a religious conversion and upon his release, he started Prison Fellowship. Prison Fellowship is probably best known for Angel Tree where they provide Christmas gifts to the children of inmates. Chuck wrote a number of books about our criminal justice system and I happened to read one of them when I was 14 and that got me interested in criminal justice, psychology, and social justice. I got to meet him when he gave a talk in Gainesville, Florida when I lived there. He followed up by sending me two of his recent books and a personal letter encouraging me to keep working on making our systems better. I have the letter framed and sitting on my shelf in my home office. –Eve Brank