These UCLA fans put games in perspective

On another day maybe the opening sentence here reads: “Congrats to UCLA quarterback Ben Olson, dressed in jeans and jersey, for successfully running onto the field for Senior Salute and not getting hurt.”

Or maybe it starts with the ref’s announcement that the timeout charged to the Trojans for wearing their home colors in the Rose Bowl and UCLA’s timeout to support the move “will run concurrently.”

If only O.J. Simpson could be here to explain to folks the difference between concurrently and consecutively.

There’s always the game to write about or maybe a colorful description of the testosterone showdown between teams at midfield to exaggerate the impact on the outcome.

But it really isn’t much of a game, the score even more lopsided in the Trojans’ favor if USC’s kicker doesn’t strike out while trying to make a field goal.

Just another Saturday of football as it turns out, here today, gone tomorrow and back again next year unless you’re friends of Bruin Steph.

Then nothing anymore is just taken for granted.

LOT H at the Rose Bowl, a tailgate city for UCLA fans, rows and rows of cars, tents and hibachis.

And in the middle of it all, an empty chair, save adornments, the bear, baseball cap and picture of Stephanie Rios.

One week, like most every week when the Bruins are playing at home, Bruin Steph is here tailgating, the center of attention, Happy Hour on Thursday before the game and always dinner on Sunday with friends.

It’s a Sunday almost two months ago, a Sunday seemingly like all the others except for a headache that can’t be shaken, a 911 call, a trip to the hospital and then a call by officials to beef up hospital security to handle all the people who show up to check on her.

“There are so many people the hospital staff wants to know if she’s some kind of movie star,” Stephani Healy says.

No, she’s just everybody’s friend, a woman who never knew her father, 14 years old when her mother dies, and adopting one family after another as her own.

If she takes on all their last names, it reads like a telephone book.

“She’s my sister,” Frances DiVita Jones says. “You don’t have to be blood to be family.”

Bruin Steph is also a day-care worker, 45 years old, and she dies. Just like that.

She never recovers from a brain aneurysm, Deacon Frank Guzman telling the overflow crowd at her funeral service a few days later, “She was always the first one to the party, and now the first in heaven.”

Before the service is over, Dave Dominguez says, “We gave her an eight-clap send off.”

Five more days and it’s time for UCLA to play another game, rows and rows of cars, tents and hibachis.

“We’re together to tailgate for Washington State,” Dominguez says, “and then it’s time for the Stanford game, and she’s gone. Out of the blue without a chance to say goodbye. . . .

“As a group we began this season knowing our team was lousy, making a deal it would be all about the tailgate the rest of the year, no weddings, showers or funerals getting in the way. Morbid as it sounds now, we joked about ‘Weekend at Bernie’s,’ and dragging anyone who didn’t cooperate to their seat.”

The thought probably crosses everyone’s mind, Steph getting the Bruin Bernie treatment until Dominguez opts to have “Bruin Steph” embroidered across the back of her chair.

“So she’s still here for every game,” he says, “in spirit.”

But it’s just not the same.

“She always brings the pasta salad,” Healy says. “No pasta salad anymore.”

THE FIRST time everyone gathers without her, UCLA is beating Stanford in the final seconds and who knows what role her spirit plays.

But now it’s time to take on USC, Jim Gutierrez leading a group of Trojans fans to the UCLA tailgate to pay their respects because a friend is a friend no matter what color the T-shirt.

“She’d be spending half her day with us if she was still with us,” Gutierrez says.

Here for one game, gone for the next. It’s still too much for some of her friends, but who has so many friends?

“We talked about that on the telephone once,” says DiVita Jones, who is wearing Bruin Steph’s jacket to remind her of her friend. “She says you get different things from different friends, that’s why you have so many different friends. You can talk about God to one, football with another.”

She talks to Kelley Younger about her plans to walk for breast cancer awareness, but dies before she can make the 60-mile walk. So Younger takes her place, raising money and walking, because that’s what a friend does.

“It’s something I would never do, but I know what it meant to her,” Younger says. “I see people carrying flags honoring their mothers or sisters and I’m looking for one that says, ‘I’m honoring my friend.’ I see one with six miles to go, my knees and ankles twice their normal size by then, but I run two blocks and ask if I might get my picture holding the flag.

“They just give it to me instead, so I cross the finish line with it in my hands.”

Emotions remain raw and laughter loud in Lot H as one by one Bruin Steph’s friends line up to tell stories.

“Oh, the stories we can’t tell,” DiVita Jones says, “but I can tell you one of her favorite phrases: live, laugh and love.”

Then it’s time for the game to begin, life and death, as you know, for so many.

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t.j.simers@latimes.com