🕷️ Crawler Inspector

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Direct Parameter Lookup

Raw Queries and Responses

1. Shard Calculation

Query:

Response:

Calculated Shard: 25 (from laksa090)

2. Crawled Status Check

Query:

curl -X POST \
  'http://laksa025.int.ahrefs:8124/' \
  -H 'Content-Type: text/plain' \
  -H 'X-ClickHouse-Database: crawler3' \
  -H 'Authorization: Basic YXBpOg==' \
  -d 'SELECT getAhrefsURLFromUnparsed(src_unparsed) AS found_url, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(download_stamp), 0) AS crawl_time, ifNull(toUnixTimestamp(props_url_first_seen), 0) AS first_indexed_time, download_http_code AS http_code, src_unparsed AS src_unparsed, src_root_hash AS src_root_hash, history_drop_reason AS history_drop_reason, meta_title AS meta_title, meta_descriptions AS meta_descriptions, attrs_boilerpipe_text AS attrs_boilerpipe_text, attrs_markdown AS attrs_markdown, attrs_readable_markdown AS attrs_readable_markdown, meta_canonical AS meta_canonical FROM crawler3.page_info_local FINAL PREWHERE (src_root_hash, src_unparsed) IN ((getAhrefsRootHashFromUnparsed(getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-29/sandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters\')), getAhrefsUnparsedNoserviceFromURL(\'https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-29/sandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters\'))) FORMAT JSONEachRow'

Response:

{"found_url":"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2020-01-29\/sandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters","crawl_time":1773602649,"first_indexed_time":1580303373,"http_code":200,"src_unparsed":"com,latimes!www,\/california\/story\/2020-01-29\/sandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters s443","src_root_hash":"7344800029135033825","history_drop_reason":null,"meta_title":"Kobe Bryant's girls are dealing with their father's sudden, untimely death. My daughters did too - Los Angeles Times","meta_descriptions":["I was in the grocery store when the news landed in a text message from a friend."],"attrs_boilerpipe_text":"I was in the grocery store when the news landed in a text message from a friend. “Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas this morning. So terribly tragic.”\nHis sudden death\nwas more than tragic; it was triggering for me.\nKobe’s girls would be growing up without a father — just as my three daughters had. It’s a loss that transcends whatever healing the grieving process ultimately brings.\nI hurried through the checkout line and made it to my car, tears blurring my vision. I knew I should be the one to break the news to my daughters, but I just sat there staring at my phone.\nWould this feel as personal to them as it did to me? Would it penetrate layers of buried grief, resurrecting painful memories? Or would it simply be another heartbreaking loss of a beloved celebrity?\nA phone call from my youngest daughter answered that. She’d been crying all morning, holed up alone in her San Francisco apartment. “It’s so not fair! What are they going to do?” she said.\nI knew exactly who “they” were: Kobe’s family. His wife. His three surviving girls. He was a star whose basketball prowess was legendary, but his legacy, to us at least, rests on his devotion to daughters.\nMy daughter’s pain was for those now-fatherless girls. Her outrage reflected the anger that her 3-year-old self could not express when her father died 26 years ago.\nMy husband’s death, like Kobe’s, was utterly  unexpected. I got the news from a police officer, who knocked on our door as the girls and I were making Christmas cookies and counting down the minutes until he would be home.\nI gathered them around me and explained, as gently as I could, that Daddy had died, that he wouldn’t be coming home, but that he’d be an angel watching us from above. That didn’t comfort anyone.\nKobe Bryant and daughter Gianna after the Lakers defeated the Orlando Magic in Game Five of the 2009 NBA Finals.\n(Ronald Martinez \/ Getty Images)\nMy middle daughter, just weeks from her fifth birthday, was unable to wrap her mind around what I’d said. “But I just made him a gingerbread man,” she told me, nonchalantly dusting the flour from her shirt. Who was going to eat that if daddy didn’t come home?\nMy 8-year-old refused to believe the news. She covered her ears with her hands and tried to hold back her tears. “I’ll be the only girl in the third grade that doesn’t have a father,” she shouted.\nShe seemed to understand in that moment that she had been marked in a way that set her apart and might never fade. It would take years for me to acknowledge that.\nI flashed back to that dreadful night, as I made the rounds of my daughters to talk about the death of Kobe and his 13-year-old Gianna, a budding superstar on the basketball court.\nMy middle daughter is now 31 and married to a sports fanatic who’s just like her dad in ways that only I can see. They have a 1-year-old daughter, who wears tiny sports jerseys and sits on her father’s lap, shrieking and clapping through hours of basketball on TV.\nNow my daughter is seeing them through the lens of Kobe and Gianna: daddy and his mini-me. She’s put aside her list of chores and focused on being grateful for her family.\nFor my youngest, now 29, the tragedy has taken her back in time, not just to the loss she suffered at 3, but to all the ways she loved Kobe. “He was my first crush,” she told me on Sunday. In middle school, when she played basketball, he was the image she conjured up every time she set foot on the court.\nMore on Kobe Bryant from our columnists\nMy oldest is trying to hold on to the only bit of solace we can find: At least in those last terrifying moments, father and daughter had each other. But that only makes it harder for the rest of the family.\nI can’t bear to think about what Vanessa Bryant must be going through in this nightmarish time. I remember how scary and bewildering it felt.\nYears after their father died, one of my daughters admitted that she understood when I said he was dead, “but I didn’t know that meant he would\nalways\nbe dead.”\nNone of us really understood what\nalways dead\nwould mean. We couldn’t have imagined that our lives would be shaped in perpetuity by his absence.\nMy husband, like Kobe, was delighted to be the father of girls. He’d been a three-sport athlete, the toughest kid in a family of five boys. Everyone presumed that one day he’d be coaching a son.\nBut his daughters were the joy of his life. They brought out a tenderness that balanced his ferocity. He coddled and cuddled them, but also encouraged them to test their limits in a way that their doting mother never would.\nI imagine Kobe’s daughters softened him that same way. His relationship with them certainly helped shape the way we perceived him. The public shame of a sexual assault allegation and marital indiscretion seemed to fade as years went by and we watched him defer to his wife and dote on his daughters.\nHis girls, like mine, lost something irreplaceable when their father died. That loss will be etched into their psyche — as individuals and a family.\nWe’ve been shadowed since then by the sense that happiness is a tenuous thing. But we’ve also learned to be grateful for every good thing.\nMore to Read","attrs_markdown":"- [News](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/)\n  \n  - [Home Page](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/)\n  - [California](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california)\n  - [Election 2024](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/topic\/election-2024)\n  - [Housing & Homelessness](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/homeless-housing)\n  - [Politics](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/politics)\n  - [Science & Medicine](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/science)\n  - [World & Nation](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/world-nation)\n- [Business](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business)\n  \n  - [Artificial Intelligence](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/topic\/artificial-intelligence)\n  - [Autos](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/autos)\n  - [Jobs, Labor & Workplace](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/topic\/jobs-labor)\n  - [Real Estate](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/real-estate)\n  - [Technology and the Internet](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/business\/technology)\n- [California](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california)\n  \n  - [California Politics](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/topic\/california-law-politics)\n  - [Earthquakes](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/topic\/earthquakes)\n  - [Education](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/topic\/education)\n  - [Housing & Homelessness](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/homeless-housing)\n  - [L.A. 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My daughters did too\n![The Banks family](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/ca9e8d6\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2362x1334+0+0\/resize\/1200x678!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F46%2F04%2Fd098cb864645a6822ec0d69bc665%2Fsandy-banks.jpg)\n\nSandy Banks’ husband, Jackie Robinson, holds Brittany while Banks holds Danielle and Alyssa. His death 26 years ago left the three daughters fatherless.\n\n(Family photo)\n\nBy [Sandy Banks](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/people\/sandy-banks)Columnist\n\nJan. 29, 2020 5 AM PT\n\n- Share via\n  \n  Close extra sharing options\n  \n  - [Email](mailto:?body=Kobe%20Bryant%27s%20girls%20are%20dealing%20with%20their%20father%27s%20sudden%2C%20untimely%20death.%20My%20daughters%20did%20too%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters%0A%0AI%20was%20in%20the%20grocery%20store%20when%20the%20news%20landed%20in%20a%20text%20message%20from%20a%20friend.%20)\n  - [Facebook](https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters)\n  - [X](https:\/\/x.com\/intent\/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters&text=Kobe%20Bryant%27s%20girls%20are%20dealing%20with%20their%20father%27s%20sudden%2C%20untimely%20death.%20My%20daughters%20did%20too)\n  - [LinkedIn](https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/shareArticle?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters&title=Kobe%20Bryant%27s%20girls%20are%20dealing%20with%20their%20father%27s%20sudden%2C%20untimely%20death.%20My%20daughters%20did%20too&summary=I%20was%20in%20the%20grocery%20store%20when%20the%20news%20landed%20in%20a%20text%20message%20from%20a%20friend.%20&source=Los%20Angeles%20Times)\n  - [Threads](https:\/\/threads.net\/intent\/post?text=Kobe%20Bryant%27s%20girls%20are%20dealing%20with%20their%20father%27s%20sudden%2C%20untimely%20death.%20My%20daughters%20did%20too%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters)\n  - [Reddit](https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters&title=Kobe%20Bryant%27s%20girls%20are%20dealing%20with%20their%20father%27s%20sudden%2C%20untimely%20death.%20My%20daughters%20did%20too)\n  - [WhatsApp](https:\/\/api.whatsapp.com\/send?text=Kobe%20Bryant%27s%20girls%20are%20dealing%20with%20their%20father%27s%20sudden%2C%20untimely%20death.%20My%20daughters%20did%20too%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters)\n  - Copy Link URL Copied\\!\n  - Print\n\nI was in the grocery store when the news landed in a text message from a friend. “Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas this morning. So terribly tragic.”\n\n[His sudden death](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/lakers\/story\/2020-01-26\/lakers-kobe-bryant-obit) was more than tragic; it was triggering for me.\n\nKobe’s girls would be growing up without a father — just as my three daughters had. It’s a loss that transcends whatever healing the grieving process ultimately brings.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nI hurried through the checkout line and made it to my car, tears blurring my vision. I knew I should be the one to break the news to my daughters, but I just sat there staring at my phone.\n\nWould this feel as personal to them as it did to me? Would it penetrate layers of buried grief, resurrecting painful memories? Or would it simply be another heartbreaking loss of a beloved celebrity?\n\nA phone call from my youngest daughter answered that. She’d been crying all morning, holed up alone in her San Francisco apartment. “It’s so not fair! What are they going to do?” she said.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nI knew exactly who “they” were: Kobe’s family. His wife. His three surviving girls. He was a star whose basketball prowess was legendary, but his legacy, to us at least, rests on his devotion to daughters.\n\n[![Kobe Bryant poses with his family after getting his jerseys retired before a game between the Lakers and the Golden State Warriors at Staples Center on Dec. 18, 2017.](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/ee8dbe3\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/4444x2963+0+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fed%2Fd5%2Fa64bdf144331becef0e3dbc99fe2%2Faptopix-warriors-lakers-basketball.jpg)](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/lakers\/story\/2020-01-28\/kobe-bryant-devotion-family-became-paramount-basketball-career-ended)\n\n[Lakers](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/lakers)\n\n### [Kobe Bryant’s devotion to family became paramount when his basketball career ended](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/lakers\/story\/2020-01-28\/kobe-bryant-devotion-family-became-paramount-basketball-career-ended)\n\nKobe Bryant’s relationship with wife, Vanessa, survived early tumult and he eventually repaired a rift with his parents. His four daughters always came first.\n\nJan. 28, 2020\n\nMy daughter’s pain was for those now-fatherless girls. Her outrage reflected the anger that her 3-year-old self could not express when her father died 26 years ago.\n\nMy husband’s death, like Kobe’s, was utterly unexpected. I got the news from a police officer, who knocked on our door as the girls and I were making Christmas cookies and counting down the minutes until he would be home.\n\nI gathered them around me and explained, as gently as I could, that Daddy had died, that he wouldn’t be coming home, but that he’d be an angel watching us from above. That didn’t comfort anyone.\n\n![Kobe Bryant and Gianna after Game 5 of the NBA Finals in 2009](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/594e0c0\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/3000x2074+0+0\/resize\/1200x830!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fed%2Fcd%2F5fa8aeb24ad1b168905e46728107%2Fgettyimages-884885421.jpg)\n\nKobe Bryant and daughter Gianna after the Lakers defeated the Orlando Magic in Game Five of the 2009 NBA Finals.\n\n(Ronald Martinez \/ Getty Images)\n\nMy middle daughter, just weeks from her fifth birthday, was unable to wrap her mind around what I’d said. “But I just made him a gingerbread man,” she told me, nonchalantly dusting the flour from her shirt. Who was going to eat that if daddy didn’t come home?\n\nAdvertisement\n\nMy 8-year-old refused to believe the news. She covered her ears with her hands and tried to hold back her tears. “I’ll be the only girl in the third grade that doesn’t have a father,” she shouted.\n\n[![Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna watch the first half of an NCAA college basketball game between Connecticut and Houston.](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/bb60855\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/3417x2278+0+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F87%2F15%2F11a8954447749bc5cf6f031746e0%2Fap-victims28n.JPG)](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/lakers\/story\/2020-01-28\/kobe-bryant-became-champion-of-womens-sports-after-career)\n\n[Lakers](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/lakers)\n\n### [Kobe Bryant became champion of women’s sports after career](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/lakers\/story\/2020-01-28\/kobe-bryant-became-champion-of-womens-sports-after-career)\n\nAfter his Lakers career, Kobe Bryant became a huge advocate for women’s basketball. His passion for the game was considered genuine.\n\nJan. 28, 2020\n\nShe seemed to understand in that moment that she had been marked in a way that set her apart and might never fade. It would take years for me to acknowledge that.\n\nI flashed back to that dreadful night, as I made the rounds of my daughters to talk about the death of Kobe and his 13-year-old Gianna, a budding superstar on the basketball court.\n\nMy middle daughter is now 31 and married to a sports fanatic who’s just like her dad in ways that only I can see. They have a 1-year-old daughter, who wears tiny sports jerseys and sits on her father’s lap, shrieking and clapping through hours of basketball on TV.\n\nNow my daughter is seeing them through the lens of Kobe and Gianna: daddy and his mini-me. She’s put aside her list of chores and focused on being grateful for her family.\n\n[![Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna Bryant took in the U.S. Women's National soccer team game vs. China at Qualcomm Stadium on April 10, 2014](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/66c068f\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/4320x2880+0+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F2c%2F25%2F105175f445f1bcaf9982d8cd60ad%2Fkc-kobe-001.JPG)](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2020-01-27\/kobe-bryant-helicopter-crash-victims)\n\n[California](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california)\n\n### [Mothers, fathers, daughters, coaches: Here are the 9 killed in the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2020-01-27\/kobe-bryant-helicopter-crash-victims)\n\nNine people, including Kobe Bryant, were killed when a helicopter crashed and burst into flames in Calabasas.\n\nJan. 28, 2020\n\nFor my youngest, now 29, the tragedy has taken her back in time, not just to the loss she suffered at 3, but to all the ways she loved Kobe. “He was my first crush,” she told me on Sunday. In middle school, when she played basketball, he was the image she conjured up every time she set foot on the court.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nMore on Kobe Bryant from our columnists\n\n- [Markazi: Kobe Bryant shared a special bond with daughter Gianna over the game they loved](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/lakers\/story\/2020-01-26\/kobe-bryant-daughter-gianna-basketball-crash-death)\n- [Plaschke: How can Kobe Bryant be gone? His legend wasn’t supposed to end this way](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/lakers\/story\/2020-01-26\/bill-plaschke-column-on-kobe-bryant)\n- [McNamara: For my 13-year-old basketball player, Gianna Bryant’s death was a bigger blow than Kobe’s](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/entertainment-arts\/story\/2020-01-27\/gianna-bryant-death-tough-on-teen-basketball-player)\n\nMy oldest is trying to hold on to the only bit of solace we can find: At least in those last terrifying moments, father and daughter had each other. But that only makes it harder for the rest of the family.\n\nI can’t bear to think about what Vanessa Bryant must be going through in this nightmarish time. I remember how scary and bewildering it felt.\n\nYears after their father died, one of my daughters admitted that she understood when I said he was dead, “but I didn’t know that meant he would *always* be dead.”\n\nNone of us really understood what *always dead* would mean. We couldn’t have imagined that our lives would be shaped in perpetuity by his absence.\n\n[![LOS ANGELES, CA, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2015 - Kobe Bryant stands for the National Anthem.](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/23e9bcc\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2037x1358+271+242\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fee%2F68%2F7197dcbd473ea17acb96721d61f6%2F2445837-sp-1129-lakers-12-rcg.JPG)](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/story\/2020-01-26\/complete-coverage-kobe-bryant-daughter-gianna-among-9-dead-in-helicopter-crash)\n\n[Sports](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports)\n\n### [Complete coverage: Kobe Bryant, daughter Gianna among 9 dead in helicopter crash](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/story\/2020-01-26\/complete-coverage-kobe-bryant-daughter-gianna-among-9-dead-in-helicopter-crash)\n\nComplete coverage of the death of Kobe Bryant, his daughter, Gianna, and seven others in a helicopter crash.\n\nJan. 26, 2020\n\nMy husband, like Kobe, was delighted to be the father of girls. He’d been a three-sport athlete, the toughest kid in a family of five boys. Everyone presumed that one day he’d be coaching a son.\n\nBut his daughters were the joy of his life. They brought out a tenderness that balanced his ferocity. He coddled and cuddled them, but also encouraged them to test their limits in a way that their doting mother never would.\n\nI imagine Kobe’s daughters softened him that same way. His relationship with them certainly helped shape the way we perceived him. The public shame of a sexual assault allegation and marital indiscretion seemed to fade as years went by and we watched him defer to his wife and dote on his daughters.\n\nAdvertisement\n\nHis girls, like mine, lost something irreplaceable when their father died. That loss will be etched into their psyche — as individuals and a family.\n\nWe’ve been shadowed since then by the sense that happiness is a tenuous thing. But we’ve also learned to be grateful for every good thing.\n\n### More to Read\n- [![NEWBURY PARK-CA-JANUARY 27, 2020: Michelle Cordova, left, and Azul Cossio, right, pay their respects at a makeshift memorial outside of Kobe Bryant’s Mamba Sports Academy in Newbury Park on Monday, January 27, 2020. (Christina House \/ Los Angeles Times)](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/123f3fe\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5551x3712+9+0\/resize\/320x214!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fc6%2Fd7%2F1ebb90ef4c1596bebd0d6717fa18%2Fla-photos-1staff-484458-me-0127-kobe-follow-08-cmh.jpg)](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2020-01-28\/kobe-bryant-orange-county)\n  \n  ### [In Orange County, Kobe Bryant grew from basketball’s enfant terrible into a ‘typical dad’](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2020-01-28\/kobe-bryant-orange-county)\n  Jan. 28, 2020\n- [![The Kobe and Gianna Bryant Dream Court in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/6468a5f\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/1280x856+0+56\/resize\/320x214!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F28%2Fef%2F74b98b684627b075f51167acbe76%2Fkobe-and-gianna-bryant-dream-court-west-philadelphia.JPG)](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2024-04-24\/kobe-bryant-philadelphia-tour)\n  \n  Voices\n  \n  ### [Arellano: Starting with his favorite cheesesteak haunt, Kobe Bryant’s spirit is all over Philadelphia](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2024-04-24\/kobe-bryant-philadelphia-tour)\n  \n  April 24, 2024\n- [![LOS ANGELES, CALIF. -- SUNDAY, JANUARY 26, 2020: Fans gather outside the Staples center to mourn the death of Kobe Bryant after news spread of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna are among 9 dead in helicopter crash in Calabasas that morning, in Los Angeles, Calif., on Jan. 26, 2020. (Marcus Yam \/ Los Angeles Times)](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/887d491\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5549x3711+9+0\/resize\/320x214!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe7%2F67%2F13c84336426ea3d969aa8e2c9c02%2Fla-photos-1staff-484293-me-0126-kobecrash-mwy-0515.JPG)](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2020-02-23\/kobe-bryant-memorial)\n  \n  ### [How Los Angeles is remembering Kobe Bryant](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2020-02-23\/kobe-bryant-memorial)\n  Feb. 23, 2020\n\n[California](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california)\n\n[![](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/0c1c7df\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/1688x1688+656+0\/resize\/130x130!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fdc%2Fab%2F03ba7b6d4460a914b5e068909a39%2F1495134-me-sandy-banks-6279.JPG)](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/people\/sandy-banks)\n\n[Sandy Banks](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/people\/sandy-banks)\n\nFollow Us\n\n- [X](https:\/\/x.com\/SandyBanksLA)\n\nDuring more than three decades at the Los Angeles Times, Sandy Banks has served as reporter, editor, editorial writer and internship director. But she’s best known for her personal columns, which focused on private lives, public policy and people who inspire and infuriate us. A Cleveland native, Banks has three grown daughters and lives in Northridge.\n\n### More From the Los Angeles Times\n- [![ A bear takes a stroll on Highland Place in Monrovia on Friday morning. ](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/e115e58\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/2400x1600+0+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fbc%2F9e%2Fb2bc13eb4c358eb0dd909512c065%2Fla-photos-1staff-496739-me-0221-monrovia-bear-011.IK.jpg)](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2026-03-14\/monrovia-bear-attack-woman-dog)\n  \n  [California](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california)\n  \n  ### [Woman walking in Monrovia is targeted by bear](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2026-03-14\/monrovia-bear-attack-woman-dog)\n  \n  March 14, 2026\n- [![Danny Thomas, left, known as, \"The Bubbleman,\" and his wife, Gwyneth Manierre, make bubbles at the Venice Beach Skate Park.](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/9db9a88\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/7752x5168+0+13\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F12%2Fab%2F97f0660545f59af57672bd41fdbc%2F1545764-me-0311-laweather-march-heat-wave-gem-001.jpg)](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2026-03-14\/southern-california-march-heatwave-extreme-heat-watch-los-angeles)\n  \n  [California](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california)\n  \n  ### [‘Dangerous’ heat wave warning issued for Southern California next week](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2026-03-14\/southern-california-march-heatwave-extreme-heat-watch-los-angeles)\n  \n  March 14, 2026\n- [![LOS ANGELES, CA, MARCH 13, 2026: Elle Seibert, 31, who is living with long covid, is photographed in Los Angeles on Friday, March 13, 2026. (Christina House \/ Los Angeles Times)](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/e2be283\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/3634x2423+0+176\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F4a%2Ff3%2F5d3dfeb74ffc94635b859226f7a5%2F1545849-sci-long-covid-elle-seibert-cmh-04.jpeg)](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/science\/story\/2026-03-14\/thousands-of-people-disabled-by-long-covid-seek-answers)\n  \n  [Science & Medicine](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/science)\n  \n  ### [Long COVID leaves thousands of L.A. 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So terribly tragic.”\n\n[His sudden death](https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/lakers\/story\/2020-01-26\/lakers-kobe-bryant-obit) was more than tragic; it was triggering for me.\n\nKobe’s girls would be growing up without a father — just as my three daughters had. It’s a loss that transcends whatever healing the grieving process ultimately brings.\n\nI hurried through the checkout line and made it to my car, tears blurring my vision. I knew I should be the one to break the news to my daughters, but I just sat there staring at my phone.\n\nWould this feel as personal to them as it did to me? Would it penetrate layers of buried grief, resurrecting painful memories? Or would it simply be another heartbreaking loss of a beloved celebrity?\n\nA phone call from my youngest daughter answered that. She’d been crying all morning, holed up alone in her San Francisco apartment. “It’s so not fair! What are they going to do?” she said.\n\nI knew exactly who “they” were: Kobe’s family. His wife. His three surviving girls. He was a star whose basketball prowess was legendary, but his legacy, to us at least, rests on his devotion to daughters.\n\nMy daughter’s pain was for those now-fatherless girls. Her outrage reflected the anger that her 3-year-old self could not express when her father died 26 years ago.\n\nMy husband’s death, like Kobe’s, was utterly unexpected. I got the news from a police officer, who knocked on our door as the girls and I were making Christmas cookies and counting down the minutes until he would be home.\n\nI gathered them around me and explained, as gently as I could, that Daddy had died, that he wouldn’t be coming home, but that he’d be an angel watching us from above. That didn’t comfort anyone.\n\n![Kobe Bryant and Gianna after Game 5 of the NBA Finals in 2009](https:\/\/ca-times.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/594e0c0\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/3000x2074+0+0\/resize\/1200x830!\/quality\/75\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fed%2Fcd%2F5fa8aeb24ad1b168905e46728107%2Fgettyimages-884885421.jpg)\n\nKobe Bryant and daughter Gianna after the Lakers defeated the Orlando Magic in Game Five of the 2009 NBA Finals.\n\n(Ronald Martinez \/ Getty Images)\n\nMy middle daughter, just weeks from her fifth birthday, was unable to wrap her mind around what I’d said. “But I just made him a gingerbread man,” she told me, nonchalantly dusting the flour from her shirt. Who was going to eat that if daddy didn’t come home?\n\nMy 8-year-old refused to believe the news. She covered her ears with her hands and tried to hold back her tears. “I’ll be the only girl in the third grade that doesn’t have a father,” she shouted.\n\nShe seemed to understand in that moment that she had been marked in a way that set her apart and might never fade. It would take years for me to acknowledge that.\n\nI flashed back to that dreadful night, as I made the rounds of my daughters to talk about the death of Kobe and his 13-year-old Gianna, a budding superstar on the basketball court.\n\nMy middle daughter is now 31 and married to a sports fanatic who’s just like her dad in ways that only I can see. They have a 1-year-old daughter, who wears tiny sports jerseys and sits on her father’s lap, shrieking and clapping through hours of basketball on TV.\n\nNow my daughter is seeing them through the lens of Kobe and Gianna: daddy and his mini-me. She’s put aside her list of chores and focused on being grateful for her family.\n\nFor my youngest, now 29, the tragedy has taken her back in time, not just to the loss she suffered at 3, but to all the ways she loved Kobe. “He was my first crush,” she told me on Sunday. In middle school, when she played basketball, he was the image she conjured up every time she set foot on the court.\n\nMore on Kobe Bryant from our columnists\n\nMy oldest is trying to hold on to the only bit of solace we can find: At least in those last terrifying moments, father and daughter had each other. But that only makes it harder for the rest of the family.\n\nI can’t bear to think about what Vanessa Bryant must be going through in this nightmarish time. I remember how scary and bewildering it felt.\n\nYears after their father died, one of my daughters admitted that she understood when I said he was dead, “but I didn’t know that meant he would *always* be dead.”\n\nNone of us really understood what *always dead* would mean. We couldn’t have imagined that our lives would be shaped in perpetuity by his absence.\n\nMy husband, like Kobe, was delighted to be the father of girls. He’d been a three-sport athlete, the toughest kid in a family of five boys. Everyone presumed that one day he’d be coaching a son.\n\nBut his daughters were the joy of his life. They brought out a tenderness that balanced his ferocity. He coddled and cuddled them, but also encouraged them to test their limits in a way that their doting mother never would.\n\nI imagine Kobe’s daughters softened him that same way. His relationship with them certainly helped shape the way we perceived him. The public shame of a sexual assault allegation and marital indiscretion seemed to fade as years went by and we watched him defer to his wife and dote on his daughters.\n\nHis girls, like mine, lost something irreplaceable when their father died. That loss will be etched into their psyche — as individuals and a family.\n\nWe’ve been shadowed since then by the sense that happiness is a tenuous thing. But we’ve also learned to be grateful for every good thing.\n\nMore to Read","meta_canonical":null}

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URL	https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-29/sandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters
Last Crawled	2026-03-15 19:24:09 (1 month ago)
First Indexed	2020-01-29 13:09:33 (6 years ago)
HTTP Status Code	200
Meta Title	Kobe Bryant's girls are dealing with their father's sudden, untimely death. My daughters did too - Los Angeles Times
Meta Description	I was in the grocery store when the news landed in a text message from a friend.
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Boilerpipe Text	I was in the grocery store when the news landed in a text message from a friend. “Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas this morning. So terribly tragic.” His sudden death was more than tragic; it was triggering for me. Kobe’s girls would be growing up without a father — just as my three daughters had. It’s a loss that transcends whatever healing the grieving process ultimately brings. I hurried through the checkout line and made it to my car, tears blurring my vision. I knew I should be the one to break the news to my daughters, but I just sat there staring at my phone. Would this feel as personal to them as it did to me? Would it penetrate layers of buried grief, resurrecting painful memories? Or would it simply be another heartbreaking loss of a beloved celebrity? A phone call from my youngest daughter answered that. She’d been crying all morning, holed up alone in her San Francisco apartment. “It’s so not fair! What are they going to do?” she said. I knew exactly who “they” were: Kobe’s family. His wife. His three surviving girls. He was a star whose basketball prowess was legendary, but his legacy, to us at least, rests on his devotion to daughters. My daughter’s pain was for those now-fatherless girls. Her outrage reflected the anger that her 3-year-old self could not express when her father died 26 years ago. My husband’s death, like Kobe’s, was utterly unexpected. I got the news from a police officer, who knocked on our door as the girls and I were making Christmas cookies and counting down the minutes until he would be home. I gathered them around me and explained, as gently as I could, that Daddy had died, that he wouldn’t be coming home, but that he’d be an angel watching us from above. That didn’t comfort anyone. Kobe Bryant and daughter Gianna after the Lakers defeated the Orlando Magic in Game Five of the 2009 NBA Finals. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images) My middle daughter, just weeks from her fifth birthday, was unable to wrap her mind around what I’d said. “But I just made him a gingerbread man,” she told me, nonchalantly dusting the flour from her shirt. Who was going to eat that if daddy didn’t come home? My 8-year-old refused to believe the news. She covered her ears with her hands and tried to hold back her tears. “I’ll be the only girl in the third grade that doesn’t have a father,” she shouted. She seemed to understand in that moment that she had been marked in a way that set her apart and might never fade. It would take years for me to acknowledge that. I flashed back to that dreadful night, as I made the rounds of my daughters to talk about the death of Kobe and his 13-year-old Gianna, a budding superstar on the basketball court. My middle daughter is now 31 and married to a sports fanatic who’s just like her dad in ways that only I can see. They have a 1-year-old daughter, who wears tiny sports jerseys and sits on her father’s lap, shrieking and clapping through hours of basketball on TV. Now my daughter is seeing them through the lens of Kobe and Gianna: daddy and his mini-me. She’s put aside her list of chores and focused on being grateful for her family. For my youngest, now 29, the tragedy has taken her back in time, not just to the loss she suffered at 3, but to all the ways she loved Kobe. “He was my first crush,” she told me on Sunday. In middle school, when she played basketball, he was the image she conjured up every time she set foot on the court. More on Kobe Bryant from our columnists My oldest is trying to hold on to the only bit of solace we can find: At least in those last terrifying moments, father and daughter had each other. But that only makes it harder for the rest of the family. I can’t bear to think about what Vanessa Bryant must be going through in this nightmarish time. I remember how scary and bewildering it felt. Years after their father died, one of my daughters admitted that she understood when I said he was dead, “but I didn’t know that meant he would always be dead.” None of us really understood what always dead would mean. We couldn’t have imagined that our lives would be shaped in perpetuity by his absence. My husband, like Kobe, was delighted to be the father of girls. He’d been a three-sport athlete, the toughest kid in a family of five boys. Everyone presumed that one day he’d be coaching a son. But his daughters were the joy of his life. They brought out a tenderness that balanced his ferocity. He coddled and cuddled them, but also encouraged them to test their limits in a way that their doting mother never would. I imagine Kobe’s daughters softened him that same way. His relationship with them certainly helped shape the way we perceived him. The public shame of a sexual assault allegation and marital indiscretion seemed to fade as years went by and we watched him defer to his wife and dote on his daughters. His girls, like mine, lost something irreplaceable when their father died. That loss will be etched into their psyche — as individuals and a family. We’ve been shadowed since then by the sense that happiness is a tenuous thing. But we’ve also learned to be grateful for every good thing. More to Read
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Focus mode Show Search Advertisement [California](https://www.latimes.com/california) # Kobe Bryant’s girls are dealing with their father’s sudden, untimely death. My daughters did too ![The Banks family](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/ca9e8d6/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2362x1334+0+0/resize/1200x678!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F46%2F04%2Fd098cb864645a6822ec0d69bc665%2Fsandy-banks.jpg) Sandy Banks’ husband, Jackie Robinson, holds Brittany while Banks holds Danielle and Alyssa. His death 26 years ago left the three daughters fatherless. (Family photo) By [Sandy Banks](https://www.latimes.com/people/sandy-banks)Columnist Jan. 29, 2020 5 AM PT - Share via Close extra sharing options - [Email](mailto:?body=Kobe%20Bryant%27s%20girls%20are%20dealing%20with%20their%20father%27s%20sudden%2C%20untimely%20death.%20My%20daughters%20did%20too%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters%0A%0AI%20was%20in%20the%20grocery%20store%20when%20the%20news%20landed%20in%20a%20text%20message%20from%20a%20friend.%20) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters) - [X](https://x.com/intent/tweet?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters&text=Kobe%20Bryant%27s%20girls%20are%20dealing%20with%20their%20father%27s%20sudden%2C%20untimely%20death.%20My%20daughters%20did%20too) - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters&title=Kobe%20Bryant%27s%20girls%20are%20dealing%20with%20their%20father%27s%20sudden%2C%20untimely%20death.%20My%20daughters%20did%20too&summary=I%20was%20in%20the%20grocery%20store%20when%20the%20news%20landed%20in%20a%20text%20message%20from%20a%20friend.%20&source=Los%20Angeles%20Times) - [Threads](https://threads.net/intent/post?text=Kobe%20Bryant%27s%20girls%20are%20dealing%20with%20their%20father%27s%20sudden%2C%20untimely%20death.%20My%20daughters%20did%20too%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters) - [Reddit](https://www.reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters&title=Kobe%20Bryant%27s%20girls%20are%20dealing%20with%20their%20father%27s%20sudden%2C%20untimely%20death.%20My%20daughters%20did%20too) - [WhatsApp](https://api.whatsapp.com/send?text=Kobe%20Bryant%27s%20girls%20are%20dealing%20with%20their%20father%27s%20sudden%2C%20untimely%20death.%20My%20daughters%20did%20too%20https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fcalifornia%2Fstory%2F2020-01-29%2Fsandy-banks-column-kobe-bryant-daughters) - Copy Link URL Copied\! - Print I was in the grocery store when the news landed in a text message from a friend. “Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas this morning. So terribly tragic.” [His sudden death](https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers/story/2020-01-26/lakers-kobe-bryant-obit) was more than tragic; it was triggering for me. Kobe’s girls would be growing up without a father — just as my three daughters had. It’s a loss that transcends whatever healing the grieving process ultimately brings. Advertisement I hurried through the checkout line and made it to my car, tears blurring my vision. I knew I should be the one to break the news to my daughters, but I just sat there staring at my phone. Would this feel as personal to them as it did to me? Would it penetrate layers of buried grief, resurrecting painful memories? Or would it simply be another heartbreaking loss of a beloved celebrity? A phone call from my youngest daughter answered that. She’d been crying all morning, holed up alone in her San Francisco apartment. “It’s so not fair! What are they going to do?” she said. Advertisement I knew exactly who “they” were: Kobe’s family. His wife. His three surviving girls. He was a star whose basketball prowess was legendary, but his legacy, to us at least, rests on his devotion to daughters. [![Kobe Bryant poses with his family after getting his jerseys retired before a game between the Lakers and the Golden State Warriors at Staples Center on Dec. 18, 2017.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/ee8dbe3/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4444x2963+0+0/resize/840x560!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fed%2Fd5%2Fa64bdf144331becef0e3dbc99fe2%2Faptopix-warriors-lakers-basketball.jpg)](https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers/story/2020-01-28/kobe-bryant-devotion-family-became-paramount-basketball-career-ended) [Lakers](https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers) ### [Kobe Bryant’s devotion to family became paramount when his basketball career ended](https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers/story/2020-01-28/kobe-bryant-devotion-family-became-paramount-basketball-career-ended) Kobe Bryant’s relationship with wife, Vanessa, survived early tumult and he eventually repaired a rift with his parents. His four daughters always came first. Jan. 28, 2020 My daughter’s pain was for those now-fatherless girls. Her outrage reflected the anger that her 3-year-old self could not express when her father died 26 years ago. My husband’s death, like Kobe’s, was utterly unexpected. I got the news from a police officer, who knocked on our door as the girls and I were making Christmas cookies and counting down the minutes until he would be home. I gathered them around me and explained, as gently as I could, that Daddy had died, that he wouldn’t be coming home, but that he’d be an angel watching us from above. That didn’t comfort anyone. ![Kobe Bryant and Gianna after Game 5 of the NBA Finals in 2009](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/594e0c0/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x2074+0+0/resize/1200x830!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fed%2Fcd%2F5fa8aeb24ad1b168905e46728107%2Fgettyimages-884885421.jpg) Kobe Bryant and daughter Gianna after the Lakers defeated the Orlando Magic in Game Five of the 2009 NBA Finals. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images) My middle daughter, just weeks from her fifth birthday, was unable to wrap her mind around what I’d said. “But I just made him a gingerbread man,” she told me, nonchalantly dusting the flour from her shirt. Who was going to eat that if daddy didn’t come home? Advertisement My 8-year-old refused to believe the news. She covered her ears with her hands and tried to hold back her tears. “I’ll be the only girl in the third grade that doesn’t have a father,” she shouted. [![Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna watch the first half of an NCAA college basketball game between Connecticut and Houston.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/bb60855/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3417x2278+0+0/resize/840x560!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F87%2F15%2F11a8954447749bc5cf6f031746e0%2Fap-victims28n.JPG)](https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers/story/2020-01-28/kobe-bryant-became-champion-of-womens-sports-after-career) [Lakers](https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers) ### [Kobe Bryant became champion of women’s sports after career](https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers/story/2020-01-28/kobe-bryant-became-champion-of-womens-sports-after-career) After his Lakers career, Kobe Bryant became a huge advocate for women’s basketball. His passion for the game was considered genuine. Jan. 28, 2020 She seemed to understand in that moment that she had been marked in a way that set her apart and might never fade. It would take years for me to acknowledge that. I flashed back to that dreadful night, as I made the rounds of my daughters to talk about the death of Kobe and his 13-year-old Gianna, a budding superstar on the basketball court. My middle daughter is now 31 and married to a sports fanatic who’s just like her dad in ways that only I can see. They have a 1-year-old daughter, who wears tiny sports jerseys and sits on her father’s lap, shrieking and clapping through hours of basketball on TV. Now my daughter is seeing them through the lens of Kobe and Gianna: daddy and his mini-me. She’s put aside her list of chores and focused on being grateful for her family. [![Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna Bryant took in the U.S. Women's National soccer team game vs. China at Qualcomm Stadium on April 10, 2014](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/66c068f/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4320x2880+0+0/resize/840x560!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F2c%2F25%2F105175f445f1bcaf9982d8cd60ad%2Fkc-kobe-001.JPG)](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-27/kobe-bryant-helicopter-crash-victims) [California](https://www.latimes.com/california) ### [Mothers, fathers, daughters, coaches: Here are the 9 killed in the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-01-27/kobe-bryant-helicopter-crash-victims) Nine people, including Kobe Bryant, were killed when a helicopter crashed and burst into flames in Calabasas. Jan. 28, 2020 For my youngest, now 29, the tragedy has taken her back in time, not just to the loss she suffered at 3, but to all the ways she loved Kobe. “He was my first crush,” she told me on Sunday. In middle school, when she played basketball, he was the image she conjured up every time she set foot on the court. Advertisement More on Kobe Bryant from our columnists - [Markazi: Kobe Bryant shared a special bond with daughter Gianna over the game they loved](https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers/story/2020-01-26/kobe-bryant-daughter-gianna-basketball-crash-death) - [Plaschke: How can Kobe Bryant be gone? His legend wasn’t supposed to end this way](https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers/story/2020-01-26/bill-plaschke-column-on-kobe-bryant) - [McNamara: For my 13-year-old basketball player, Gianna Bryant’s death was a bigger blow than Kobe’s](https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-01-27/gianna-bryant-death-tough-on-teen-basketball-player) My oldest is trying to hold on to the only bit of solace we can find: At least in those last terrifying moments, father and daughter had each other. But that only makes it harder for the rest of the family. I can’t bear to think about what Vanessa Bryant must be going through in this nightmarish time. I remember how scary and bewildering it felt. Years after their father died, one of my daughters admitted that she understood when I said he was dead, “but I didn’t know that meant he would always be dead.” None of us really understood what always dead would mean. We couldn’t have imagined that our lives would be shaped in perpetuity by his absence. [![LOS ANGELES, CA, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2015 - Kobe Bryant stands for the National Anthem.](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/23e9bcc/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2037x1358+271+242/resize/840x560!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fee%2F68%2F7197dcbd473ea17acb96721d61f6%2F2445837-sp-1129-lakers-12-rcg.JPG)](https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-01-26/complete-coverage-kobe-bryant-daughter-gianna-among-9-dead-in-helicopter-crash) [Sports](https://www.latimes.com/sports) ### [Complete coverage: Kobe Bryant, daughter Gianna among 9 dead in helicopter crash](https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-01-26/complete-coverage-kobe-bryant-daughter-gianna-among-9-dead-in-helicopter-crash) Complete coverage of the death of Kobe Bryant, his daughter, Gianna, and seven others in a helicopter crash. Jan. 26, 2020 My husband, like Kobe, was delighted to be the father of girls. He’d been a three-sport athlete, the toughest kid in a family of five boys. Everyone presumed that one day he’d be coaching a son. But his daughters were the joy of his life. They brought out a tenderness that balanced his ferocity. He coddled and cuddled them, but also encouraged them to test their limits in a way that their doting mother never would. I imagine Kobe’s daughters softened him that same way. His relationship with them certainly helped shape the way we perceived him. The public shame of a sexual assault allegation and marital indiscretion seemed to fade as years went by and we watched him defer to his wife and dote on his daughters. Advertisement His girls, like mine, lost something irreplaceable when their father died. That loss will be etched into their psyche — as individuals and a family. We’ve been shadowed since then by the sense that happiness is a tenuous thing. But we’ve also learned to be grateful for every good thing. ### More to Read - [![NEWBURY PARK-CA-JANUARY 27, 2020: Michelle Cordova, left, and Azul Cossio, right, pay their respects at a makeshift memorial outside of Kobe Bryant’s Mamba Sports Academy in Newbury Park on Monday, January 27, 2020. 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Readable Markdown	I was in the grocery store when the news landed in a text message from a friend. “Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash in Calabasas this morning. So terribly tragic.” [His sudden death](https://www.latimes.com/sports/lakers/story/2020-01-26/lakers-kobe-bryant-obit) was more than tragic; it was triggering for me. Kobe’s girls would be growing up without a father — just as my three daughters had. It’s a loss that transcends whatever healing the grieving process ultimately brings. I hurried through the checkout line and made it to my car, tears blurring my vision. I knew I should be the one to break the news to my daughters, but I just sat there staring at my phone. Would this feel as personal to them as it did to me? Would it penetrate layers of buried grief, resurrecting painful memories? Or would it simply be another heartbreaking loss of a beloved celebrity? A phone call from my youngest daughter answered that. She’d been crying all morning, holed up alone in her San Francisco apartment. “It’s so not fair! What are they going to do?” she said. I knew exactly who “they” were: Kobe’s family. His wife. His three surviving girls. He was a star whose basketball prowess was legendary, but his legacy, to us at least, rests on his devotion to daughters. My daughter’s pain was for those now-fatherless girls. Her outrage reflected the anger that her 3-year-old self could not express when her father died 26 years ago. My husband’s death, like Kobe’s, was utterly unexpected. I got the news from a police officer, who knocked on our door as the girls and I were making Christmas cookies and counting down the minutes until he would be home. I gathered them around me and explained, as gently as I could, that Daddy had died, that he wouldn’t be coming home, but that he’d be an angel watching us from above. That didn’t comfort anyone. ![Kobe Bryant and Gianna after Game 5 of the NBA Finals in 2009](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/594e0c0/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3000x2074+0+0/resize/1200x830!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fed%2Fcd%2F5fa8aeb24ad1b168905e46728107%2Fgettyimages-884885421.jpg) Kobe Bryant and daughter Gianna after the Lakers defeated the Orlando Magic in Game Five of the 2009 NBA Finals. (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images) My middle daughter, just weeks from her fifth birthday, was unable to wrap her mind around what I’d said. “But I just made him a gingerbread man,” she told me, nonchalantly dusting the flour from her shirt. Who was going to eat that if daddy didn’t come home? My 8-year-old refused to believe the news. She covered her ears with her hands and tried to hold back her tears. “I’ll be the only girl in the third grade that doesn’t have a father,” she shouted. She seemed to understand in that moment that she had been marked in a way that set her apart and might never fade. It would take years for me to acknowledge that. I flashed back to that dreadful night, as I made the rounds of my daughters to talk about the death of Kobe and his 13-year-old Gianna, a budding superstar on the basketball court. My middle daughter is now 31 and married to a sports fanatic who’s just like her dad in ways that only I can see. They have a 1-year-old daughter, who wears tiny sports jerseys and sits on her father’s lap, shrieking and clapping through hours of basketball on TV. Now my daughter is seeing them through the lens of Kobe and Gianna: daddy and his mini-me. She’s put aside her list of chores and focused on being grateful for her family. For my youngest, now 29, the tragedy has taken her back in time, not just to the loss she suffered at 3, but to all the ways she loved Kobe. “He was my first crush,” she told me on Sunday. In middle school, when she played basketball, he was the image she conjured up every time she set foot on the court. More on Kobe Bryant from our columnists My oldest is trying to hold on to the only bit of solace we can find: At least in those last terrifying moments, father and daughter had each other. But that only makes it harder for the rest of the family. I can’t bear to think about what Vanessa Bryant must be going through in this nightmarish time. I remember how scary and bewildering it felt. Years after their father died, one of my daughters admitted that she understood when I said he was dead, “but I didn’t know that meant he would always be dead.” None of us really understood what always dead would mean. We couldn’t have imagined that our lives would be shaped in perpetuity by his absence. My husband, like Kobe, was delighted to be the father of girls. He’d been a three-sport athlete, the toughest kid in a family of five boys. Everyone presumed that one day he’d be coaching a son. But his daughters were the joy of his life. They brought out a tenderness that balanced his ferocity. He coddled and cuddled them, but also encouraged them to test their limits in a way that their doting mother never would. I imagine Kobe’s daughters softened him that same way. His relationship with them certainly helped shape the way we perceived him. The public shame of a sexual assault allegation and marital indiscretion seemed to fade as years went by and we watched him defer to his wife and dote on his daughters. His girls, like mine, lost something irreplaceable when their father died. That loss will be etched into their psyche — as individuals and a family. We’ve been shadowed since then by the sense that happiness is a tenuous thing. But we’ve also learned to be grateful for every good thing. More to Read
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