ST. LOUIS (KMOV.com) — The death of Laker legend Kobe Bryant shook the sports world last weekend, and fans around the world were heartbroken at the news of the fatal helicopter crash in California.

Here in St. Louis, a woman felt the loss even deeper; remembering what the superstar player did for her dying husband.

Dwann Dillon and his wife Buffy owned No Limit Hair Care in Spanish Lake. She did the beauty side and he did the barber side.

“Everybody loved him and I’m not just saying that because I’m his wife,” Buffy Dillon said. “Everybody loved him.”

In 2013, at 39 years old, Dillon went to the hospital with stomach pain.

“When they opened him up he was already at stage 4 colon cancer,” Buffy Dillon said. “So they gave him six months to live. So we brought him home on hospice.”

Dwann loved basketball. He played for Riverview Gardens High School and even coached several youth teams. Bryant was is favorite player.

This is where the Dream Foundation enters the story. They are an organization that makes dreams come true for terminally ill patients like Dillon.

“They basically told me what they were gonna try to do,” Buffy Dillon said. “I didn’t know that it could even happen.”

What happened next shocked everyone.

“Kobe sent my husband an iPad to be able to Skype on … and what we thought would be a five minute conversation … He and his wife Vanessa talked to my husband and I for 30 minutes,” Buffy Dillon Said. “And you would have thought that Kobe and my husband had known each other forever.”

Buffy said Bryant has also sent her husband other autographed memorabilia. She never shared this story with the media and now to decided to speak out after Bryant’s death.

“It’s devastating,” she said. “It’s hard to hear about anyone dying like that.”

Dwann Dillon passed away in August of 2013 and Buffy Dillon started a foundation that bears his name, to help others.

Continue Reading: