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Germanna nursing student wins Jackson memorial tickets

Woman and her cousin flew to L.A. yesterday for today's event.

View LIVE VIDEO of the memorial service.

Date published: 7/7/2009

Hollie Soutter spent Monday morning serving eggs benedict, pancakes and coffee at the Inn at Kellys Ford in Remington.

By evening, the 20-year-old Culpeper resident and waitress was in the back of a cab in Los Angeles barreling toward Dodger Stadium.

She and her cousin, Jessica Davis, 19, found out earlier in the day that they'd won tickets to the Michael Jackson memorial service.

About 1.6 million people had entered to win.

Soutter, a nursing student at Germanna Community College, didn't get in to the Staples Center, where the speakers, celebrities and coffin were, but she was among a few thousand other fans across the street watching on three big screens inside the Nokia Theatre.

“Even though our applause -- nobody could hear it -- there were a couple of standing ovations,” she said.

After the main arena ceremony, Jackson's family came over to the Nokia Theatre to speak to his fans there.

"Words can't describe how amazing it is to even be here," she said by telephone from inside the theater.

Before yesterday, Soutter said she couldn’t relate to the emotional outbursts she'd seen in Elvis movies on TV.

"I never understood how you could get that way over a celebrity," she said.

She does now.

During the memorial, "people were crying. People were laughing," she said. "It was a roller coaster."

"It was really crazy. I didn't think I would get emotional, but I found myself with tears in my eyes a couple of times."

Singers Jennifer Hudson and Smokey Robinson, she said, moved her the most at the memorial.

Soutter flies home this morning, but planned to take in as much of Los Angeles as she could yesterday afternoon and evening.

Her plans included a walk down Hollywood Boulevard and a trip to the beach.

She promised her dad, Fred, she'd get a picture of the Pacific Ocean, something he's never seen.

And by late afternoon, she still hadn’t been able to sign a memorial wall set up for fans to share messages to their hero.

Given the chance, she planned to write:

“We came 3,000 miles just to see you and say thanks for your music."

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Date published: 7/7/2009

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