An Arizona woman recalled how Kobe Bryant once made a surprise visit to a sick 5-year-old boy — also named Kobe — and offered to pay for his medical treatment, just a week before the child died.

When Kristen O’Connor Hecht was a staffer at a Phoenix hospital, she says, she asked her husband, Tom Hecht, then an exec with the Phoenix Suns, to see if Bryant would sign an autograph for the terminally ill boy, since the Los Angeles Lakers were coming to town for a game.

“A day later, Tom called me and said, ‘He’ll do it!'” Hecht wrote on Facebook Sunday. “I was thrilled. I thought I would bring a ball or whatever it was to work.”

But instead of Bryant simply sending an autograph, Hecht says, her husband told her: “No … he wants to come meet the little boy.'”

Without alerting the press, and with Hecht’s help, the NBA legend sneaked into the building to visit the boy in the cardiac intensive care unit.

They spent an hour passing a basketball back and forth until it was time for Bryant to face off against the Suns.

“Several autographed items were left and many photos were taken,” Hecht wrote.

After the visit, “Kobe turned to me and said, ‘Kristen, what can I do to help? Is it a financial thing? Because I can take care of that,'” Hecht wrote.

“I was floored,” Hecht wrote. “Not only by his sincerity and offer of generosity, but the kindness and warmth he displayed.”

A week later, the boy, who had a heart defect but was too small for a transplant, died.

His mother later reached out to Hecht to tell her how much the visit had meant to her son.

“She said those were the most joyful moments of his entire life,” Hecht recalled. “The photos were the only photos she had of him smiling.”

From that day on, Bryant “has been my hero,” Hecht wrote.

“And when people would tell me they didn’t like him, I would say, ‘Let me tell you a story…,'” she added.

Hecht’s heartwarming story about the hoops star’s generosity was one of many to emerge following his death Sunday.

Bryant, 41, and his 13-year-old daughter, Gianna, were killed along with seven other people when the helicopter they were riding in crashed into a mountain near Calabasas, California.