01/16/2022
This is my buddy. His name is Gopher Dave and he’s a legend. We met a few months ago when I thought he was a homeless person trying to steal something out of my yard, when in reality he was trying to help me with my gopher problem/destroyed yard and leave a business card. He’s been retired for a decade and at 72 years old he sees this as his community service to the neighborhood. It’s a good thing it wasn’t just a business based friendship because what had been a 4 month problem, Dave solved in about 2 hours for me. After this we became good friends and kept in touch. He would ride his bike by my house, sit in my yard and we talked about the Grateful Dead playing in San Diego, stories of himself as a kid in Kansas City attending Chiefs games, life, everything. He was having noticeable pains one day when we were hanging out and told me his doctor told him it as because of his diet and eating too much BBQ at Petco Park which we both laughed about because I too get lost in the (bbq) sauce. He called me at the beginning of December and told me they finally figured it out and he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that had spread all over his body. Having no family in the area, and having lived in the same apartment for 22 years, he had a community that rose up and took care of him in this time of need. This picture is from when I picked him up after his first Chemo treatment. He looked at the nurse pushing his wheelchair to my car and told her “this is my getaway car” with a large grin on his face. One of the last things he told me sitting up in his bed was that he wanted to go camping/over-landing with me and fishing because that’s what truly makes him happy. Me too buddy. Unfortunately we never got to make this trip happen. Gopher Dave left us this morning and is no longer in pain. See you on the other side brother, I’ll bring the Peanut M&Ms. ❤️✊🏼🐿
