In Sizing Up Kindness, Small-Town Values Fit Big-City Style

When it comes to the news, the twain seldom meets between Southern California and my old stomping grounds in Nebraska. But Valerie Bosselman of Omaha eloquently made the connection this week as we talked on the phone about what she labeled “the absolute random act of kindness of a couple big-city boys.”

She was talking about brothers Joseph and Benjamin Esshaghian of Los Angeles, who until last week had never set foot in Omaha and probably never planned to. And certainly not in August. But more on them later: first, the story of Valerie’s 24-year-old daughter, Megan.

Megan’s life was plagued by a series of embarrassing medical causes and effects that began when she was 5.

By high school, she was overweight and had health problems that left her trying to reconcile the cool chick she felt like on the inside with the way she felt and looked on the outside. A girl with fashion sense and who loved clothes -- particularly a line of sweaters with the Belldini label -- found herself carrying upwards of 200 pounds on a 5-foot-6 frame. Instead of chic tops, she tended to wear oversized rugby shirts to hide her girth.

Around the time of Megan’s college graduation, bad symptoms from her youth re-emerged. On the morning of what should have been a celebratory graduation party, Megan woke up wondering what was wrong with her.

What was wrong turned out to be a tumor on the adrenal gland that sat atop her left kidney. Doctors said her adrenal problems may have dated back to her childhood.

On Aug. 3 of last year, doctors removed the tumor. One of the byproducts of the surgery, doctors said, was that Megan’s weight should begin to drop.

One night in intensive care, Valerie was trying to cheer up Megan, so she wore a Belldini sweater. It was the kind of sweater that Megan wore when she went to see the doctors. Megan joked that her mother looked pretty cool and was impressed that she’d dressed herself without her help. Valerie remembers thinking the only thing sparkling in ICU that night was the rhinestone zipper on her Belldini.

After surgery, Valerie and Dan Bosselman looked for signs Megan was bouncing back. Valerie was heartened when Megan started going online to check out Belldini sweaters and told her that the Los Angeles-based company was offering a $1,000 giveaway. Megan said she wanted to win the contest.

Megan didn’t win, but Valerie figured, what the heck, she’d write the company a letter. In early July, she told Belldini of Megan’s cancer recovery and long-standing infatuation with its clothing line. By then, as doctors had forecast, Megan’s weight dropped after surgery. She has slimmed down from a peak of size 16 to 6/8 for her prized Belldini sweaters. Her weight now is around 145 and she’s shooting for 135, her mother says.

That brings us to present. It’s at this point that our Midwest-West Coast twain draws together.

“To my surprise,” Valerie says, “the next day after I wrote them, my husband said the executive vice president from Belldini called for me. I said, ‘What?’ I was absolutely floored. Being honest, even the fact he called was very touching. He said they wanted to do something for Megan. He said they wanted to make her dreams come true and be part of her party. He said they wanted to send some clothes out.”

The party he referred to was one the Bosselmans planned as a one-year celebration of Megan’s cancer surgery. They settled on Aug. 18, and Valerie invited Joseph Esshaghian, Belldini’s executive vice president and son of its president.

Imagine, if you will, what Esshaghian, 29, could have said when offered the chance to fly from Los Angeles to Omaha for a one-evening party at a stranger’s home. Thank you and enjoy the sweaters, but I can’t make it. Or, perhaps, Thank you, but I have a conflict.

Instead, he said yes. And his younger brother Benjamin, 21, decided to go, too.

At the party last week, Valerie

thanked the 120 or so people who had seen Megan through her struggles. As she spoke on the outdoor patio, Joseph and Benjamin waited inside. Valerie eventually got around to discussing Megan’s love for Belldini sweaters and how Megan came to link her recovery to buying increasingly smaller sweaters.

“And now,” Valerie said on the patio to Megan and the group, “I’d like to present to you the Belldini brothers.”

By now, Valerie tells me, there isn’t a dry eye at the party. The Esshaghian brothers -- “Belldini” is a name their father dreamed up for the company -- emerged and Joseph presented a stunned Megan with “the official monogrammed Belldini coffee cup.”

Big laughs, but there’s more, he told her. On cue, his brother Benjamin and Megan’s brother Ryan wheeled out a clothing rack of the entire fall line of Belldini sweaters. It’s about two dozen sweaters with a value of more than twice what their giveaway contest had been.

“I’ll be honest, we have a prejudice against California people,” Valerie says in that beautifully unadorned way that Nebraskans have. “That they’re all a bit crazy, fast driving, fast living. I think what gets pumped into us in the Midwest is shows like ‘Dr. 90210’ that’s all about plastic surgery and appearance.”

The “Belldini brothers,” as she refers to them, were content to give the gift with only the Bosselman family present. At Valerie’s insistence, they did it at the party. It was her idea, Valerie says, to tell the media about it, but only because she wanted Megan to be recognized.

Of course, there’s one more interview to note. It’s with Joseph Esshaghian, who laughs at being known as half of the nonexistent Belldini brothers. “First, I wanted to send her a box full of goods,” he says. “Then we thought it might be more special and meaningful if we went.”

I suggested he could have sent the stuff and still been a hero to Megan. “Cancer is something that affects everybody,” he says.

“I lost my grandparents to cancer. It’s just so prevalent in society and devastating and when you hear a story of a girl like her who is so young and gets cancer ... it’s a story of triumph for her. If I need to hop on a plane for a day to make a memorable moment in someone’s life, it’s a small thing for me to do.”

His father, Robert, Joseph says, instructed his sons not to create hoopla over their generosity. “He said, ‘Go do your good deed and come back,’ ” Joseph says.

He laughed when I mentioned the public relations he’s done for Angelenos in Omaha. “L.A. does tend to be a very shallow place and does give off that kind of image,” Joseph says.

“But people are people. This is a very human connection. I thought they were the sweetest people in Omaha. Just about every single person came up and thanked us.”

You can probably imagine, as I can, how the rest of the evening went. You can use your own words to describe how memorable the evening was for Megan.

Here’s how Valerie put it: “I often say that when Megan was in ICU, we thought it was the end of her life. The reality is that as the days have unfolded, it was the beginning of her life. The Belldini brothers launched her beautifully into the beginning of a new life.”

Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@ latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.