It's All About Me
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My name is Karen. I live in Sherman Oaks, CA. I'm an adjunct math professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.
It's my husband Tim's fault that I'm a hockey fan.
He took me to my first Kings game at the Forum in 1994 – someone gave him free seats in the first row behind the Blackhawks bench. But I didn't really attend games with him regularly until the team moved to Staples Center.
We've been Kings Season Ticket holders since 2005-06.
I started this website on April 22, 2004. We moved to this domain in April 2006.
How it all began...
Back in 2004, when Ian was still a member of the Los Angeles Kings, I thought it would be fun to have a Lappy shirt made since he was my favorite player, so I started looking around online at some custom shirt sites.
I found one option that said "It's All About (insert name here)" which I thought it was pretty unique. I chose the gray and purple to go with the Kings colors.
It was after I ordered the shirt that I decided to put together a little Lappy webpage, mainly to organize my photos and some articles I'd saved, and I named it after the slogan on the shirt.
The debut of the shirt - June 2004
A month after that picture was taken, Lappy signed a contract with the Colorado Avalanche. The following NHL season was lost to the lock-out.
After the lock-out, I wore the shirt to the games in Los Angeles and Anaheim when the Avs came to town. During a Kings/Avalanche game at Staples Center in March 2006, the Altitude camera crew saw my shirt in the crowd and showed a clip of me during the broadcast in Colorado.
A few people on the Avalanche message board recognized me and the shirt from this website, and word spread from there.
I started getting messages from people asking where they could get shirts like that. As more and more requests came in, I had an idea to make the shirts available with the proceeds going to charity.
Some fans in Denver talked to Lappy for me after practice one day to ask which charity he would like us to support, and the rest is history.
The first batch was done in time for the last home game of the 2005-06 regular season.
We flew out to Denver and brought about 20 shirts with us for that game, and we got a great reaction during warm-ups.
As of the end of the 2009-10 season, over 1000 shirts and sweatshirts have been sold to Lappy fans in 40 states in the USA, 4 provinces in Canada, and 9 countries around the world.
People have thanked me for doing this, but I'm thrilled to be able to give something back in Ian's honor as a way to say thank you for all that he's done for both the community and for the fans.
Ian talks about "It's All About Lappy" - Altitude's "One on One" series - March 2009
(Visit the 2008-09 Video Page to see the other segments from this 30-minute interview with Ian)