He’d go on to raise a family here, and there are little reminders of it every day. The other day, when it rained, his son grabbed a UNC jacket his dad had picked up for him while working Drake Maye’s pro day in Chapel Hill in his role with the NFL Network.

This place is part of him and his family now.

“I mean, people around here in Charlotte see me, and sometimes I’m in a grocery store,” he joked. “I’m not in a grocery store being Steve Smith; I’m in the grocery store looking for toilet paper, you know.”

Of course, it wasn’t much longer in the conversation about coming here and how it changed him that Smith was wiping away a single tear.

The offseason after the Panthers’ first Super Bowl run in 2003 when he was blossoming into a major star — complete with the heroics of a double-overtime game-winning walk-off touchdown in St. Louis — Smith was about to be rewarded. They were negotiating his first contract extension, the kind of money that would secure his family for generations.

He and his wife were looking at houses in Los Angeles, and they stopped to see his grandparents on East 126th Street. His late grandfather’s birthday was April 27th, and the proximity of that caught Smith Friday, as he recalled how proud he was as he showed his grandson his photo on the cover of the Sporting News.

He paused to collect himself before continuing to talk about being here now.

“Charlotte’s where I live, and that’s where my family calls home,” he said. But LA’s where I’m from, and that’ll never change.”

They thought about living on both coasts, but this was where he was putting down roots. So they decided to pass on the West Coast property.

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