Ailene Voisin: Fan to represent Kings at lottery

Her Lebanese grandmother had a ticket for the Titanic's fatal voyage and missed the boat. Literally missed the boat.

Now, I don't know about you, but I think that's pretty darn lucky. What are the odds of that happening? Probably about the same as Margie Parilo – an original Kings season-ticket holder – winning the contest to represent the team at the NBA draft lottery without mentioning her incredible good fortune or formidable bloodlines. Seriously. This would be like a comedian forgetting to deliver the punch line and still being summoned for an encore.

Officially, Parilo won because her entry was selected from the original batch of 192 written submissions, because she received a significant percentage of the 17,419 fan votes cast for the video presentations of the six finalists, and because during the "lottery" conducted last Sunday at Chris Webber's Center Court restaurant, the ping-pong balls bounced her way.

"My luck obviously started with my grandmother (Sophia Bounejum)," Parilo conceded Tuesday afternoon, "and I really can't believe I forgot to say something about that. She was an immigrant who lived to be 101 and died right here in Sacramento. This is all forcing me to dig into my background a little more."

A married mother of three young adults, Parilo, 49, is one of those charming, small-town Sacramento stories. She is earnest and witty, and in spite of her incessant fawning over the Kings, much more dynamic in person than in her video. There were no costumes, no raps, no clever poems. There was only this slim 5-foot-2 woman with short dark hair and shapely glasses expressing unconditional love and affection for her husband, her children, her jobs and of course, her Kings.

What else do Kings fans need to know about the person who will fly first class to New York, stay for two nights in a five-star Manhattan hotel, be driven in a limousine to NBA Entertainment headquarters early next Tuesday evening, and attempt to improve the Kings' current No. 12 draft positioning?

Parilo, a native Sacramentan and oldest of four girls, describes a conventional childhood spent "doing all the girlie things," including membership in the Girl Scouts, playing the piano and watching the boys play sports. Though her extended local family includes members of the football Carmazzis – and she says original Kings owner Gregg Lukenbill is a distant cousin – neither her parents nor siblings had any interest in athletics.

"The only memory I have of sports," Parilo continued, "is I remember winning a basketball once, and my husband, Mike, who lived down the street when we were kids, would borrow it. I would follow him to the courts because the ball was mine, and I didn't want it to disappear."

With a laugh, she added, "This is not a setup. I really do think this was meant to be. I didn't start caring about basketball until the Kings moved here."

The year was 1985. Her kids were young. Season tickets were cheap. Parilo is a certified public accountant (and community college professor) whose husband owns a company that installs irrigation systems. She recalls chatting with Brian Grant in the neighborhood, meeting slick-shooting Reggie Theus before a tipoff, appreciating Vlade Divac's community involvement, enduring the losses, savoring the victories.

"Going to the games is great for mental health," she said, chuckling. "You don't have to pay a psychiatrist. You can really de-stress. The Kings are part of our family now."

When she submitted an essay for the contest, Parilo only mentioned it to her family in passing.

"I think she was embarrassed to tell us," said daughter Theresa, an elementary school teacher and former Kings media intern. "We told her she was crazy. We thought she had no chance."

Parilo, who half-jokingly says she works the two jobs to afford the tickets, denies feeling any pressure.

"Whatever I get," she quipped, referring to the lottery outcome, "Geoff Petrie has to deal with."

About the writer:

• Call The Bee's Ailene Voisin, (916) 321-1208.