Chris Smith: The Coddings of Santa Rosa lost a dear friend in the crash that took Kobe Bryant

Melissa and David Codding felt terrible about the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and eight others.

Then the tragic news got personal.

Among the victims, the Coddings learned, was Christina Michelle Mauser, a coach on the basketball team that Bryant’s daughter, Gianna, played on. Just three months ago, Mauser was laughing and dancing at the Coddings’ Montgomery Village shopping center.

“It was her first trip here,” Melissa Codding said. The 38-year-old Christina Mauser and her musician husband, Matt, stayed in downtown Santa Rosa at the Hyatt Regency and, said Codding, “kind of toured all over the place.”

Though Christina Mauser hadn’t been to Sonoma County before, the Coddings had known and worked with her for nearly a decade. In addition to her coaching of youth basketball, Christina helped to manage her husband’s dual performing careers as a rocker with the Orange County band The Tijuana Dogs and as a Frank Sinatra tribute crooner.

Every October for the past nine years, the Coddings had Matt Mauser and his 14-piece Sinatra big band close out the fair-weather season’s Concert Under the Stars series at Montgomery Village. Until last year, Christina always stayed home in Huntington Beach with her and Matt’s three children - Penny, 11; Tom, 9, and Ivy, 3.

For the Sinatra tribute show three months ago, the Mauser kids stayed with grandparents and Christina traveled here with Matt and the orchestra.

Photos from the Oct. 10 concert show Christina dancing on stage with Matt, beaming.

“She was having a great time,” Melissa Codding said. “They were such a wonderful, loving couple.”

The Coddings and the Mausers were together also when the Sinatra tribute band performed at the Santa Rosans’ wedding at Disneyland in May of 2018. It was easy for Christina to be there because she and her family lived only a short drive away.

To realize that Christina suddenly is gone and Matt is the widowed father of three small children, Codding said, “just takes your breath away.”

Codding saw that in an interview with Anderson Cooper earlier this week, Matt said he was missing most his wife’s laugh and the “tiny little things she did.”

“I just cope, Anderson, day by day,” he told the CNN anchor.

Melissa Codding said she and David will support the GoFundMe appeal for Christina’s family. It’s at gofundme.com/f/mauser-family-support-fund.

Of course, the Coddings hope that Matt Mauser will be able to return to Santa Rosa to perform at Montgomery Village.

But, said Melissa Codding, “Who knows what’s going to happen months from now.”

HHHHHH

A RAT IS CLEVER, productive, curious. From an open-minded, astrological perspective, there’s much good to say about the rat - and for the prospects of 2020 as a Year of the Rat.

If you’ve never been to the Chinese New Year celebration that happens each year in Santa Rosa, you’ve missed a colorful, flavorful, delightful cultural experience.

There will be food, music, martial arts, lion and dragon dances and oodles more at the Year of the Rat celebration that starts at 5 p.m. Saturday at the Veterans Memorial Building in Santa Rosa.

There’s more at recacenter.org.

Happy Rat year.

You can reach Staff Writer Chris Smith at 707-521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.