Lucky for us, Magic has been our gift that keeps on giving

The busy Arizona doctor was idly rummaging through photos of a recent Los Angeles visit when one snapshot made him stop.

It had been the most apprehensive click of the trip.

It had been a dreaded intrusion into the life of a famous man on a famous street.

The doctor was scared to ask for it, scared to snap it, and even more scared when the camera stuck and he couldn’t snap it.

Yet, look, here it was.

And, oh my.

Do you see the smiling giant swathed in white?

Do you see the three little girls cuddled underneath him?

Can you feel the kindness of the expression, the generosity of the spirit?

Could you see how the man is African American, and the three children are of different ethnicities, yet it looked like they were of the same family?

The doctor looked at the photo again, recalled the events surrounding its creation, then e-mailed it to a stranger who writes for a Los Angeles newspaper.

Upon opening the attachment, the image becomes immediately familiar in its wonder, its hope, its daily promise of a miracle.

“I know it sounds crazy,” said the doctor, “but this looks like the photo of an angel.”

The real magic is in how we have somehow managed to take Earvin Johnson for granted.

Nearly a dozen years after his last game as a Laker, we have become accustomed to seeing him cutting the ribbon on an inner-city business, donating money to an inner-city school, selling hope to folks who had never been able to afford it.

We barely notice that, more than 11 years after scoring his last point, Johnson elicits more oohs and aahs these days with powerful urban investments in everything from movie theaters to Starbucks to Magic Johnson’s T.G.I.Friday’s.

We overlook the scarcity of a sports star who contributes without entourage or attitude, who still smiles at the world without asking for a smile in return, who hugs without prompting and it doesn’t matter who.

We overlook the rarity of an athlete who contributes more to his community after his retirement.

And we forget that Magic Johnson is doing all this when we thought he would be dead.

He is arguably this town’s greatest sports blessing, yet how often do we count him?

And then somebody named Michael Hovan from Scottsdale, Ariz., stumbles into Johnson on a Beverly Hills street on a December Saturday morning and ends up with a photo that makes us remember.

This is the story of that photo.

This may be a good day to hear it.

“Really, like a giant angel,” said Hovan.

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It was the second Saturday morning in December.

Hovan, in town for a medical conference, was shopping on Rodeo Drive with family that included his 9-year-old daughter Emily and two nieces.

Across the street, the girls saw a giant man in a white sweatsuit whom they immediately recognized.

“It was Magic Johnson, and they started begging me to cross the street and take his picture,” Hovan said.

The first thing that struck the doctor was, how are these little girls so familiar with an athlete whom they never saw play? How did they even know Magic Johnson?

Then he realized his nieces, who live in Southern California, know him from their father being a longtime Lakers fan. And his daughter knew him from watching him on the TNT studio basketball show, seeing his Magic Johnson Theatre and visiting one of his Starbucks.

“I thought, it’s amazing how this man’s impact spans generations,” he said.

Having been ignored by his only other encounter with a pro athlete in his life -- Johnny Bench once blew him off -- Hovan turned down the girls’ request.

“I didn’t want them to experience the pain of being brushed off,” he said. “And I didn’t want them to change the opinion of one of their heroes.”

Johnson had stopped at a crosswalk light, and the girls kept insisting, so Hovan finally gulped and walked over to him.

“The first thing I noticed was, he was all by himself, nobody around him,” Hovan said.

The next thing he noticed was that Johnson didn’t try to run, or hide. In fact, when Hovan shakily introduced himself and the girls, Johnson actually came to them.

“He bent down and hugged them,” said Hovan. “He asked how they were doing. He put his arms around them and got ready for the picture.”

At which point, the camera’s button stuck. Of course it stuck. Isn’t that always happening to common folk looking for photos of famous folk? The camera breaking just long enough to remind everyone of their place in life, the famous folk walking away in a . . .

“But that was the thing,” said Hovan. “He didn’t walk away. He stayed there and talked to the girls while I fidgeted with the camera.”

While Hovan fidgeted, other pedestrians noticed the pausing Magic and hustled over for their own photos. Then a busload of foreign tourists abruptly pulled up and dozens disembarked to join the scrum.

“It was just awful, I felt so terrible, I held Mr. Johnson up just long enough for him to be swarmed,” said Hovan.

Johnson stayed and waited until Hovan fixed the camera and took the photo, then stuck around to take care of everyone else, at which point the doctor noticed something else.

The entire time, Johnson never stopped smiling. He never stopped chatting. He embraced and engaged and touched everyone.

“He went far beyond any measure of responsibility that a public figure should feel,” said Hovan. “He stayed far longer than was reasonable.”

Surely there was a reality show camera around there somewhere?

“That was the interesting thing,” said Hovan. “Nobody was with him. Nobody was watching. There was no reason he needed to stay there other than, he was just being himself.”

Often children leave the company of their heroes as if they had just been dropped out of the heavens. Hovan’s daughter and nieces walked away giggling as if they had just spent time with a friend.

“He transferred his sense of importance to the children, he made them feel just as big as him,” said Hovan. “He was less intimidating than the Santa at the mall.”

Hovan is not an avid basketball fan. He has not been to a live NBA game in 25 years.

“But you spend a couple of minutes with Mr. Johnson and you realize why he remains relevant,” he said. “He’s genuine. That smile you see on TV is him.”

Hovan laughed.

“Most folks would never want to live next door to a pro athlete, but we left there thinking, Mr. Johnson would be a great next-door neighbor,” Hovan said.

His daughter keeps that photo in a school binder. Every day, it seems, somebody asks about it. Every day, she talks about her new friend.

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You call Magic Johnson on his cellphone.

If he’s available, he’s answering it. If he’s not available, it’s his voice on the recorded message.

He doesn’t have an electronic entourage, either.

He’s there. He answers. You tell him the story about the doctor and the three little girls. He pauses for a second.

“Wait a minute, was that the guy with the broken camera?” he says.

He laughs.

“Those were the cutest little girls,” he says. “Did the photo come out? I know the man was worried about his camera. I told him not to worry. I wasn’t going anywhere.”

I wasn’t going anywhere

You ask him, how can one of the most important people in one of the most self-important cities in America not have anywhere to go?

“You have to understand, I love L.A., I love being our ambassador, I love bringing people together,” he said. “It’s funny, but I guess it still feels like I’m playing point guard, but in a different way, doing stuff more meaningful than winning.”

He considers photos with strangers meaningful. He considers smiles and hugs in the middle of city streets to be important.

“I love being part of the fabric of a community that has given me so much,” he said. “I embrace it.”

These days, he is most proud of a statistic that has nothing to do with points or assists. It’s about the more than 30,000 minorities that have found employment in his businesses in 65 cities in 16 states.

“Somebody helped me,” he said. “I want to help somebody else.”

Plus, of course, he owns just less than 5% of the Lakers, which is actually one of the most low-key parts of his life, because he believes the organization should have one voice, and it’s not him.

However, I just had to ask him about Kobe Bryant.

“He is going to stay, we are not trading him,” he said. “I would rather take the risk of having him for two years and then letting him walk away for nothing . . . than trading him now for less value.”

So Johnson helps run this town’s biggest sports operation, he pours money into this town’s neediest neighborhoods, he takes the time to giggle with this town’s youngest visitors.

And he does it all while in a constant fight with HIV that essentially ended his career in 1991.

That is, by all accounts, amazing.

That we didn’t even mention the virus until the final paragraphs of this story is perhaps even more amazing.

“It’s dead in my body,” he said of the virus.

If so, then it is a corpse that constantly inspires him.

“After 16 years with it, every day is a blessing,” he said. “Every day, I want to get out there and fulfill my dreams and hopes. Every day, I just live.”

On this Christmas Day, then, perhaps it is appropriate to give thanks that the Magic lives here, a year-round hulking swath of holiday cheer, like the man said, an angel among us.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.