LAS VEGAS — There’s a deeper meaning inside T-Mobile Arena when the Vegas Golden Knights take the ice, for family members seated in section 11, row L, seats 1 and 2.
Aaron and Rhonda Hawley have held their season tickets since the Knights joined the NHL during the 2017-18 season.
They vividly remember the Oct. 1 shooting shortly after a preseason game in 2017 because they received a call from their daughter Ashley, who was attending the University of Oregon.
“During the shooting, my nephew was there with his new girlfriend,” Rhonda Hawley said. “I actually got a phone call from Ashley in Oregon, because he called her. They were like brother and sister, and it hadn’t even made the news.
“The Golden Knights, even today, but back then, meant everything to us. It gave us a place to go. It gave us something positive.”
Little did they realize how much they would lean on the NHL’s 31st franchise six months later.
On March 29, 2018, their daughter Brooke, 17, and her two classmates, Dylan Mack and AJ Rossi, were killed after police said Bani Duarte, 27, crashed into their red Toyota at an intersection on the Pacific coast. Highway in Huntington Beach, California.
Two days later, Section 11, Row L, Seats 1 and 2 were a temporary salve for a lifelong injury that will seemingly never heal.
“I miss my daughter, that doesn’t change,” Hawley told Hockey News on Tuesday. “But again, (the Golden Knights are) a common positive, and there’s not a lot of common positives in there. Six degrees of Brooke. Everywhere I go, I run into something that was related to her And even though the Knights were, it was also about us, our community and our family.
“So it feels like this is our team and our place to go to be positive.”
When told about Hawley’s story, original Golden Knight Brayden McNabb was touched to be part of a team that could bring healing to a family facing such tragedy.
“It’s great to hear that, it’s pretty cool to hear,” McNabb said at an Oct. 1 event for first responders and their families at the team facility. “I’m just happy that we were able to help put a smile on her face during difficult times. This first year has been special, both on and off the ice. Hearing that, I’m very honored to be able to to be part of this team and help the community as much as possible.
Rhonda Hawley said she was always amazed at how much the community leaned on the Golden Knights after the Oct. 1 shooting. She never imagined that the same adoration that an entire town had in their time of need would be directed towards her family after losing her youngest daughter to another person’s senseless act.
“We were still grieving everything that happened on October 1 when Brooke was killed,” Hawley said. “The team that did what they did for the city was great and gave everyone a place to go.
“The first thing we did (two) days after Brooke died was go to a Golden Knights playoff game. And I know a lot of people didn’t understand it at the time, but you didn’t want to go home You didn’t understand it I didn’t know what to do, but it was a place to go. It was something that we had with them, with the team, with our family. and our friends when we had met so many people who were still subscribers around us We never thought about not going. We needed to be somewhere and it made sense to go.
Rhonda Hawley said the overwhelming support from other season ticket holders, on top of everything that happened with Oct. 1, cemented everyone around them in their section as a community.
And although she added that she was “still in a fog” during those first few weeks, she still remembers the feeling of comfort every time she arrived at T-Mobile Arena.
“It trickled down to us when we had to deal with what we had to deal with,” Hawley said. “We saw them win the Stanley Cup. We took our kids to that Game 5. Everyone around us is crying. We’re crying because they won, but we’re also crying because we started with them. It was very moving to watch but for reasons other than this city.
“They saved us that first year, that first season, in more ways than a lot of people realize. It gave us something to cheer for, it gave us something to look forward to. And it gave our family something to do together when it was super hard.”
