Opinion: A Ukrainian visitor shows us what’s at stake in the Hollywood strikes

This can be a story about serendipity — of an surprising encounter that jogged my memory once more of the ability Hollywood has on the earth.

I went exterior one current Friday afternoon to gather a package deal that had been delivered to my Hollywood Hills house. A beautiful younger lady was developing the road. She approached me hesitantly.

“Can I ask you one thing?” she mentioned. “If I hold strolling up this hill, will I get to the Hollywood signal?”

She was wearing a lacy white duster over slacks and T-shirt and her footwear weren’t meant for climbing. I instructed her she was taking the flawed route and requested if she had a automotive. She didn’t.

She spoke with an accent unfamiliar to me and I requested the place she was from. Ukraine. She defined that her title was Maria and she or he was in Los Angeles for in the future to choose up some immigration paperwork and would then be flying again to Spokane, Wash., the place she was staying with a pal. With the hours she had left, she had taken a taxi to Hollywood, hoping to search out the well-known signal and see a few of the glamour she knew from films.

I believed she appeared like a misplaced princess and I knew what I needed to do. I instructed her to attend and fetched my automotive keys. Inside minutes we have been off on a mini tour of Hollywood. First cease was the signal. I turned the nook from Franklin heading up Beachwood Drive and it loomed earlier than us. She gasped, “There it’s!” Then she mentioned one thing I’ll all the time bear in mind. “Individuals right here might imagine these are simply letters on a hill. However to us, that is our dream.”

We stopped so she may take footage. It was time for supper so we went into the Beachwood Cafe, the place she may barely eat something as a result of she was so excited. I instructed her it was mentioned that Harry Kinds as soon as dined there, which added to her pleasure.

She then poured out the story of her life, which could make a reasonably good film itself. Maria was born into a really massive household in a village on the border of Ukraine and Russia. When her mom fell in poor health, Maria and a few of her many siblings have been despatched to an orphanage the place she was educated and cared for.

“It’s not unhappy,” she mentioned. “They have been excellent to me.”

At 17, she left the orphanage and went to high school at a Ukrainian college. She wished to be a physician and by the point the conflict started final yr she had completed nearly all of medical college. However bombs have been falling; she knew she needed to go away. A pal in Spokane invited her to stick with them.

That was about six months in the past. She has discovered that with a purpose to end her research and get a medical diploma in the USA she must good her English. She started taking lessons whereas working to help herself.

I instructed her about my profession on the Related Press and the well-known tales I had coated. Her eyes grew vast once I talked about my contact with Michael Jackson and different stars. However she was most impressed that I actually stay in Hollywood, a spot that appeared fictional to her from afar.

Then it was time to go out. She would want to get an Uber to the airport quickly. However earlier than she left, I made a decision to present her another Hollywood expertise. We drove alongside Hollywood Boulevard, previous the Pantages Theatre, memento outlets and vacationer haunts.

“This is sort of a film,” she mentioned. Quickly, we have been at Grauman’s Chinese language Theatre. I parked on the curb and instructed her to go take a look at the well-known handprints and footprints within the cement. After working for a fast look earlier than I must transfer the automotive, she got here again and exclaimed, “I simply noticed Donald Duck! That’s my childhood.” I instructed her to go additional in and see extra. By the point she returned, she had seen the prints of Marilyn Monroe and plenty of others.

I drove her throughout the road to the Hollywood Roosevelt lodge and suggested her to go searching the historic web site of the primary Academy Awards. She leaned towards me and mentioned she wished to inform me one thing in confidence.

“After I determined to come back to Hollywood right this moment, I prayed for a miracle, that I might see anyone well-known. And I met you.”

She emailed me when she acquired to the airport and once more when she arrived in Spokane. She thanked me and mentioned she would come again to see me in the future. I instructed her our encounter was an instance of an English phrase she didn’t know but: serendipity. Every of us discovered one thing we had not been in search of.

Hollywood nonetheless casts its spell far and vast. Studio heads take be aware: Its future is in your fingers together with the dear desires of thousands and thousands.

Linda Deutsch was a longtime particular correspondent for the Related Press. She has been a resident of Hollywood for greater than 50 years.