Buffalo woman beats the clock to attend Jackson memorial
Buffalo woman beats odds in online drawing, rushes to pick up tickets for L. A. service today
Published: July 07, 2009, 12:30 am
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Candace Middlebrooks beat long odds to score two seats for today’s memorial service for Michael Jackson at Los Angeles’ Staples Center.
Then the Buffalo woman had to beat the clock to get a flight to L. A., where she and 8,749 others who won Sunday’s random online drawing for admission to the event had to turn in their vouchers by 6 p. m. Pacific time Monday to receive the free tickets.
Before boarding a 1:45 p. m. Southwest Airlines flight for the 6 1/2 hour trip, which included a stop in Phoenix, Middlebrooks said she hoped that making a good-faith effort to meet the deadline, even if she missed it, would convince organizers that she deserves the tickets.
As it turned out, she didn’t have to use her persuasive powers.
“Yes, I got the tickets,” she said by phone shortly after she picked them up at Dodger Stadium, where distribution was taking place. “I had my mom and dad calling to find out if they’d hold the tickets, and they extended the deadline until 7:30.
“It worked out perfectly. The plane was right on time. I ran to the ground transport area, and the cab took me there real quick. There were three or four checkpoints to get through, and it was really smooth.”
“I’m staying with my cousin Lionel, and he’s going to come with me tomorrow,” she said. “He’s really excited, too. I hope everything will go as smoothly as it has so far.”
Being a Michael Jackson super-fan helped get her there.
“I’ve listened to Michael Jackson ever since I understood what music was,” she said earlier Monday. “He’s always been big on my playlist. For him to be gone is just so strange.”
A graduate of Hutchinson-Central Technical High School and Rochester Institute of Technology who is pursuing a doctorate in genetics and molecular biology, Middlebrooks, 26, learned she had won two of the coveted seats in a Sunday evening e-mail from AEG Worldwide, which organized the tribute after Jackson died of cardiac arrest June 25 in his home.
More than 1.6 million fans reportedly registered for the free online ticket lottery.
Word that she was among the winners put Middlebrooks in scramble mode Monday morning. She called Kole Porter, promotions director of WBLK, where she once worked as an intern, to seek his help in getting to the West Coast.
When the station aired her story, a listener phoned in with an offer to pay for her round-trip flight. The caller was Middlebrooks’ father, Craig, whom she had not thought to tell about winning the tickets.
Porter hurriedly booked one of the few remaining seats on Southwest’s 1:45 departure for his former colleague. It was the last flight out of Buffalo that could get her to Los Angeles before the 6 p. m. deadline.
Meanwhile, the stage was set for Jackson’s final act as Los Angeles braced for what could be the biggest, most spectacular celebrity send-off of all time.
The family announced that the participants at the 10 a. m. memorial, which will be broadcast live, will include Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey, Usher, Lionel Richie, Kobe Bryant, Jennifer Hudson, John Mayer and Martin Luther King III.
Jackson’s friend Elizabeth Taylor will be mourning in private. She said on her Twitter feed Monday that she would not attend the memorial. “I just don’t believe that Michael would want me to share my grief with millions of others,” she tweeted. “How I feel is between us. Not a public event.”
Debbie Rowe, Jackson’s ex-wife and the mother of Jackson’s two oldest children, had planned to attend the memorial but backed out Monday.
“The onslaught of media attention has made it clear her attendance would be an unnecessary distraction to an event that should focus exclusively on Michael’s legacy,” her attorney Marta Almli said. “Debbie will continue to celebrate Michael’s memory privately.”
On eBay, bids for tickets were reaching as high as $3,000, and prices on Craigslist were in the thousands, although both sites were removing postings trying to sell them.
In Los Angeles Superior Court, a judge appointed Jackson’s longtime attorney and a family friend as administrators of his estate over the objections of his mother, Katherine. Attorney John Branca and music executive John McClain had been designated in Jackson’s 2002 will as the people he wanted to oversee his empire.
Branca and McClain will have to post a $1 million bond on the estate, and their authority will expire Aug. 3, when another hearing will be held.
News Staff Reporter Dale Anderson and the Associated Press contributed to this report. tbuckham@buffnews.com
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