Nancy Hietbrink was waiting for a girlfriend outside a packed Henderson restaurant during a rainy day nearly 20 years ago when she caught her future husband’s eye.

“He saw me from the bar and came outside and said, what are you doing?’”

Richard Hietbrink promptly invited her to have a drink inside, she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“What kind of pickup line is that?” she recalled thinking.

Nancy Hietbrink’s friend didn’t show, she said, making the first encounter with Richard a date.

They couple was together until the 67-year-old died July 22.

“He was a big man with a big personality, willing to help anyone at any time with no regard for himself,” she said in a recent interview. “He just did it, and he prided himself in being that way.”

Richard Hietbrink had recently retired as

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