NEW ORLEANS — With 15 years in New Orleans, Drew Brees was more than the city’s quarterback, he was a neighbor and friend. Just ask anyone who bumped into him!
“I said, ‘Oh my gosh y’all, that’s Drew Brees!,'” Karmyn Harris told WGNO News about the time she was at a Pelicans game with her nine-year-old son, Bentley, and her husband, Brody.
Harris said that the game was over, and she was leaving Smoothie King Center with her family when they saw Brees getting into an elevator. She was overwhelmed.
“Drew Brees stopped, turned around, saw me — the mom, crying,” Harris said.
Not only did Brees hold the elevator while posing for a picture with young Bentley, he made sure that the family took the perfect pic — on the third try.
Shannon Martz and her husband has a similar experience with Brees. They were watching the team’s practice in Metairie — fully expecting to see Brees with the rest of the team — but had no idea that he’d come over to meet the crowd.
“I’m a little vertically challenged,” Martz told WGNO. She said that Brees and her husband were prominently visible in the first photos, but she was hardly noticeable toward the bottom of the pic.
“He actually said, ‘Let’s do it again,’ and took the time,” Martz said of Brees’ insistence that the photo be what the couple wanted.
Not everyone we spoke with was a Saints fan, but they were all fans of Brees. Scott McNellen bumped into Brees at the airport in San Diego, the city where Brees started his career with the Chargers.
Brees stopped and took a photo with McNellen’s daughters.
“I said, ‘Drew, I gotta tell you, you broke my heart when you left San Diego,'” McNellen said.
“Well, I understand, but it worked out,” McNellen quotes Brees as saying.
For more on what it was like to bump into Brees, checkout our story at the top of this page.