DAYTONA BEACH — It never hurts to ask, so long as you do it politely.
That's what Oregon resident Louise Groomer learned in a chance encounter on Twitter with Kevin Harvick, one of her favorite drivers in NASCAR. Now she'll get to watch in person as the driver competes in the 56th running of the Daytona 500.
“All because I said please and I looked like a nice, older woman,” Groomer, 56, said Friday with a chuckle as she toured Daytona Beach with her husband, Bill.
Last December, as Harvick was making a six-hour flight to Las Vegas for a driver's banquet, Harvick said he got bored and fired up his Twitter account.
“It was random. I needed something to do,” said Harvick, who has 23 Sprint Cup victories including wins at the Daytona 500 and Brickyard 400 — one of eight drivers to have done so.
While the Stewart-Haas Racing driver is an avid Twitter user, he rarely follows anyone — currently he is following 157 people, though he has 379,000 followers — but Groomer's tweet asking him to follow her caught his attention.
“I thought, 'What the heck,'” Harvick recalled. “I saw she was a (Tony) Stewart and Harvick fan and a race fan in general and she asked nicely — that's not something people always do.”
He followed Groomer and a frenzy ensued with fans asking Harvick to follow him.
“@LouiseGroomer can you please help these people figure out why I followed you? It's so simple. #asklouise,” Harvick later tweeted.
Groomer said fans started following her by the hundreds.
“My twitter went crazy,” said Groomer, an emergency medical technician.
But that wasn't the end of the fun for Harvick as he decided to have Groomer and her husband be his guests at the Great American Race.
“Hey @LouiseGroomer why don't you come to the Daytona 500 as my guest? Everything's on me! Flight, room, tickets you name it!,” Harvick tweeted.
Groomer said all she could do was scream and show her husband the message. But she wondered whether it was true.
“When he said, 'I'll have my people get in touch with you,' I knew he was serious,” she said.
Sure enough, Groomer and her husband arrived in Daytona Beach Thursday night and were out shopping for Harvick gear on Friday. On Saturday, the two took a ride in a pace car, were treated to a VIP concert by country music artist Jake Owen and met Harvick. On Sunday, Groomer and her husband will watch the race from the Sprint Tower.
“It's overwhelming, we have so much to do,” she said.
Groomer isn't the only fan to have a recent interaction with Harvick. In January, Harvick tweeted a photo of a Daytona restaurant where he and his crews were eating. Jacksonville resident Mike Mitchell recognized the surroundings, and the former Navy submariner and his wife found Harvick and hung out for more than an hour.
“It was a blast,” he said. “He was a bit surprised that somebody found him.”
As he left, Harvick picked up the rest of the tab for patrons drinking Budweiser, spending about $1,200 total.
Harvick has previously said it was his friend Jake Owen who told him to be more interactive with his supporters. Now it's hard not to find him with fans.
“I think for our sport it's easy because drivers and fans come from a pretty normal life,” he said.
But Groomer's trip has been anything from normal. She said she hopes Harvick's generosity will mean good karma on the track.
“Going to Victory Lane with Kevin, that's what I want to see,” she said.
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