When "Orr, Robert" popped up on the caller ID of Collette Pelletier's phone, she thought it had to be a joke.
It wasn't a joke.
Pelletier's sister-in-law, Susan Pelletier, had won a raffle put on by the Boston Bruins Foundation, to win a Bobby Orr "The Goal" replica statue. Proceeds from the raffle would benefit organizations and initiatives assisting first responders, health care providers and front-line workers during the COVID-19 crisis. The winner would get one more thing: a Mother's Day phone call to someone of their choosing from Orr himself as part of the team's weeklong celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 1970 Stanley Cup win.
Susan chose Collette.
"We're from a big hockey family -- my grandfather, my great-grandfather," Collette Pelletier said, adding that her great-grandfather was born in Canada. "We've watched hockey forever and ever. Since Day One."
Which was why it was such a shock and a thrill to receive a call from Orr at 8:56 a.m. ET on Mother's Day. They chatted for 4 minutes and 56 seconds, half of which Collette said was her just trying to get her wits about her.
"It probably took me at least half that time to actually believe that it was him. The entire time I'm like, this is a joke. Someone's playing a trick on me," said Collette, who lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and is 59.
At one point, Orr asked how old "Bobby" was. Collette was so befuddled that it took her longer than it should have to realize he was talking about her stepson Bobby, who is 45.
It was the second call that Orr had made to the Pelletier family that morning. He had called Susan first, even though she had expected him only to call Collette. He figured that it wasn't fair for only her sister-in-law to get a call.
Susan had only entered the raffle at the last minute, finding the email as she was cleaning out her inbox. Growing up, she hadn't really been a hockey fan. Then she met her husband, Jim, and "basically I had no choice."
"Eventually I got so addicted to it that, like he always tells people, I'm sitting there, screaming, "Hit him!" Susan said. "We don't miss a game."
When she realized she could give a gift to her sister-in-law, as avid a fan as any she could think of, she went for it.
"Of course, afterwards, I think of all these things I should have said," Collette said. "I have a credenza in the living room and I have only three books on it. And one of them is his. I was looking at it the whole time, but I was so tongue-tied.
"If you can, on my behalf, thank him somehow for making my day? I am a huge fan."
