'I would have paid more' for Jackson memorial tickets
Brian Rafat, 32, and his girlfriend, Kimberly Brown, 25, came to L.A. from Toronto to attend Michael Jackson's memorial service. The couple bought their tickets but declined to say how much they paid. They would only say that they spent $2,500 to $3,000 on hotel, airfare and tickets.
Brown said the most moving part of the service was hearing Jackson’s daughter, Paris, speak.
Critics "judged him, and that child just showed that he was a good father,” she said.
Rafat said that when Jackson’s casket was taken into Staples, “you just really felt his presence. It was an amazing experience.”
The couple befriended several other Jackson fans Monday night while waiting in line to sign posters outside Staples Center.
One of those fans was Liz Gardner, 61, of Orange County. She said she wrote, “Go and find your childhood, Michael” on the poster. Gardner also bought her ticket but declined to say how much she paid.
After watching the memorial service, she said, “I tell you this: I would have paid more.”
Wendy Hill, a nurse practitioner from Pasadena, was effusive about how organized and under control the service was, inside and outside Staples Center. She said she had heard that there might be disorder. But “it was the most amazingly controlled, most well organized event I have ever been to.”
Hill said it was great to be surrounded by other Jackson fans. Comparing the singer to Mozart, she said the memorial service gave a sense that Jackson was eternal rather than of any specific moment in history: “I felt like he’s gone now, but he wasn’t really of this time or this place.”
-- Harriet Ryan
