SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- My Wish morphed into My 49ers last month. A 14-year-old who brought along a story of love and football took center stage at a Niners team meeting, asked Colin Kaepernick and company to follow him on Instagram ... and then admonished them for losing to the Raiders last season.

New 49ers head coach Jim Tomsula then facetiously told young Anthony Pineda to tone it down, saying "Hey Anthony, we gotta get another spin on this." The 75 or so players in the room laughed, but this was anything but spin. Fourteen-year-olds who just beat cancer don't hold back the truth -- especially when they are there speaking for one of the biggest 49ers fans on Earth. Or, specifically, the one who used to be on Earth.

The most popular NFL team in San Bernardino, California, 61 miles east of L.A., is probably the Oakland Raiders, which used to bug Robert Sandoval to no end. Robert had been a fan since the Steve Young/Jerry Rice 49ers era in the 1990s and would wear his San Francisco gear wherever and whenever he pleased. He even wore it to his new job at Del Taco, where one night he met an effervescent young woman named Desiree Segura.

Robert was a cook there, while Desiree worked as a cashier, but whenever they crossed paths, he noticed her easy-going smile. Robert's cousin also worked the grill and offered to give Desiree a ride home one night. Robert tagged along.

Robert wasn't shy. He asked Desiree all about herself, and when she realized he was flirting, she said, "Oh, OK, I have two kids. Like, really?'"

The fact that she had two young sons -- Anthony and Daniel -- never deterred Robert. He asked questions about the boys, asked her who their favorite football team was. Eventually, he asked for her phone number. She gave it to him.

The phone calls turned into dates, and then the dates turned into football Sundays at Desiree's home. And that's when Anthony, Desiree's oldest son, began pulling his chair up close to Robert's. At first, Robert and Anthony had bonded over their love for paintball, which thrilled Desiree. She had given birth to Anthony when she was 15, and she felt her son needed a male to emulate. But Robert's passion for the 49ers reeled Anthony in even more.

Anthony was around 10 at the time. He would see Robert living and dying with every 49er win or loss, howling at the TV set, sitting in his same lucky seat on the couch, always dressed in a Niners jersey, always reveling in Raiders defeats. Eventually, Robert and Desiree moved in together, and Anthony proclaimed right about then that he was unequivocally a 49ers fan.

"You're not a fan,'' Robert would rib him.

"Yes, I am,'' Anthony would shout.

"Prove it," Robert would say. "Who's the quarterback?"

Admittedly, Anthony's knowledge of the team was limited. He didn't know a Bill Walsh from a George Seifert or a Joe Montana from a Dwight Clark. So he began to read up on franchise's history, studied its all-time stat records, memorized its Super Bowl years. He even dressed their dog in a 49ers jersey, and Robert's work was done.

From there, the Sundays at the house were raucous -- Robert and Anthony two peas in a pod. Robert would wear his ''lucky'' white Michael Crabtree jersey, while Anthony would be decked out in a Patrick Willis get-up. "Watching the games got me, like, real excited," Anthony says. "... Like once he gets mad, I'll get mad. ... We're jumping up, yelling and screaming. ... We, like, bonded when we watched 49er games. ... It was just, like, he was my dad."

The 2012 season was then the time of their lives. As the 49ers began riding Colin Kaepernick's coattails to the playoffs, Anthony -- now an extroverted sixth-grader -- would mimic the quarterback and kiss his biceps after Niners touchdowns. Robert would belly-laugh at the sight of it.

The Super Bowl against the Ravens in February 2013 was bittersweet. Desiree and Robert hosted a party that day, and Robert and Anthony each took their "lucky" seats on the couch. When Anthony got up midgame to fetch a drink, someone stole his place, and Anthony swears that's why the 49ers lost the game 34-31. "It was horrible," Anthony says.

On the other hand, both figured there'd be more 49ers Super Bowls to come. Their wish was to eventually fly to San Francisco for a game. Maybe they'd even get to meet the players.

A few months into the 2013 season, something about Anthony was off. At first, he would come home from school every day, close his bedroom door and sleep. Desiree thought it was the grind of seventh-grade homework catching up to him. But on 49ers Sundays, Robert also noticed that Anthony's energy was bottoming out early in the afternoon. Anthony didn't want to go to school sometimes, and Robert ribbed him that he was faking to get out of class.

But next came the headaches and the nausea. One day, Anthony fell at school and vomited. He seemed pale, and his grandmother urged Desiree to take him to a doctor. It was early November, the beginning of the cold and flu season. They figured he had a virus. But to be safe, Anthony's doctor ordered blood work.

A few days later, the doctor called back and left a voicemail in the middle of a 49ers game. "It's not like a doctor to call somebody on a Sunday," Desiree said. "So I knew, like, something was really wrong." The message was to get Anthony to the nearest hospital right away, that his blood cell counts were low. That was disturbing enough. But once they got to St. Bernadine Medical Center, the front nurse asked Desiree, "Does cancer run in your family?"

Her answer was no, but Anthony was still transferred in an ambulance to nearby Loma Linda University Medical Center. After a battery of tests, it was confirmed that he had acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that requires an aggressive course of chemotherapy. Anthony didn't realize at first what leukemia was. "You mean, it's cancer?" he asked. He wondered if there was a cure, and the hospital staff told him there was every reason to believe he could be cancer-free in six months. "Oh, I'm going to fine then," he said. His goal was to be home for the Super Bowl.

More than ever, Desiree needed Robert to be her rock. By then, they had three children together -- two girls and a boy -- and he had recently asked her to marry him. They set a date: July 5, 2014. Here she was, just 29 years old, with five children under the age of 14. They also had six pit bulls -- three puppies, three grown. So Robert did what he could. He would work his job as a tire technician, help with the kids, feed the dogs, visit Anthony and get back to work.

He got run down, and perhaps that is why he fell ill. No one knows exactly how these things happen. But the more wiped out he got, the more stubborn he was about not seeing a doctor. Compared to what Anthony was going through, he thought a little headache was nothing. Eventually, his fever grew too persistent and too high to ignore. He was having trouble breathing, and in January 2014, Desiree ordered him to the hospital.

He was evaluated for his flu-like symptoms, then sent home with medication. But overnight, his condition worsened. She drove him back to the ER, and he was diagnosed definitively with the potentially deadly H1N1 flu.

Desiree was a wreck. Her son and husband were at separate hospitals, and she was frightened of visiting Anthony and contaminating him with the germs from the ICU, where she had visited Robert. So she sent her mother, Josephine, to stay with her son and hung closely by Robert's bedside. When Anthony asked where his mom was, Josephine told him she was taking care of an ill Robert. Josephine didn't want to say much more -- for fear of how Anthony would react -- and put Anthony on the phone with his mom. That's when she told Anthony that Robert was terribly sick in the hospital.

"I was like, 'Man, I can't do this,'" Anthony remembers. "I was just so sad. I just wanted to hurry up and get out of here. ... I wanted to open the window and climb out. ... I just felt like I had to go see him. .... Because, like, he was always there for me. ... When I first heard about it, I was like, 'Why, why does it have to be him? Just put me through the pain he's going through. Just make my pain twice as bad, like, not him.'"

During all of this mayhem, the 49ers were in the midst of another Super Bowl run, minus Robert and Anthony. They were each in their hospital beds when San Francisco fell to Seattle in the NFC title game 23-17, although Robert was not lucid enough to watch. By then, doctors were urging him to be placed on a respirator, something he refused to do over and over.

"Robert didn't want to be put to sleep with the breathing machine," Desiree says. "He didn't want to. And then finally he was like, 'You just do what you gotta do to make me feel better.' So they sent him up to ICU and they put him to sleep. That's the last time I ..."

In February 2014, almost exactly a year after the 49ers-Ravens Super Bowl, Robert Robert died. An inconsolable Anthony was released from the hospital to attend the funeral, and upon return, his blood work came back pristine. He was cancer-free.

"When I found out I beat it, I was like, 'Whoa, for really?'" Anthony says. "They're like, 'You beat it two months early. I was like, 'Oh my God.' I was like, 'I knew I could beat it. I told you guys. You didn't believe me.'"

That was a day that the entire family could not stop thinking about Robert. They were convinced it was Robert who cured Anthony, Robert who had rescued young Anthony one more time.

"It was just wonderful," Desiree says. "Like a lot of my friends -- they feel like Robert lost his life so Anthony could gain his."

Somehow, some way, Anthony wished he could repay him.

The doctors, just to ensure the cancer wouldn't return, ordered an extra course of chemotherapy. It meant more time in the hospital, and it also meant a visit from Make-A-Wish.

Anthony being Anthony, he joked around with the foundation's officials at first. He asked if they would buy his family a house and was told, "We don't buy cars, we don't buy houses and we don't give large amounts of money." Then, without batting an eye, he told them he had a better idea, anyway.

"My wish is to meet the 49ers," he said. "For Robert."

This is ESPN's 10th year of My Wish, a partnership with Make a Wish, granting sports wishes to kids with life-threatening conditions.

But he would not learn that his wish had been granted until his eighth-grade graduation day, where a video was played in front of the entire school. Niners tackle Joe Staley -- backed up by several teammates -- announced in the video that the team was inviting Anthony to be a 49er-for-a-day.

The middle school principal asked Anthony if he would accept, to which the 14-year-old replied: "Heck yeah!"

The student body chanted, "Anthony ... Anthony ... Anthony." A few days later, he and his family were off to the Bay Area for the 49ers' June minicamp. Anthony had never been on an airplane and had never stayed in a hotel. But he packed up Robert's favorite Michael Crabtree jersey, hoping the entire team would autograph it -- even though Crabtree was no longer a 49er.

The day began with a limo ride to the 49ers practice facility adjacent to Levi's Stadium. He ate breakfast with Reggie Bush, Torrey Smith and head coach Jim Tomsula. He was then directed toward the locker room, and out walked his favorite player, Kaepernick.

"Hey Kaepernick, what's up?" Anthony said, eyes wide, wide, wide open. "Me and you gotta play catch."

Anthony had his iPad with him -- although the screen was cracked -- so he could snap a photo of whomever and whatever came his way. His locker was set up in between offensive linemen Alex Boone and Joe Looney, and after dropping his backpack in his cubicle, he was invited to the equipment room. He was fitted with a helmet, shoulder pads, cleats and gloves. After trying it all on, he flashed a Heisman pose.

From there, he was ushered to the office of general manager Trent Baalke, who asked him to sign his one-day contract. He puffed out his chest and asked Baalke for $3 million, although Baalke told him the contract was for $3 -- take it or leave it. "Three dollars is close enough," Anthony said

When he then bumped into 49ers owner Jed York, he asked for a Lamborghini.

When he addressed the players in the team meeting, he was dead serious about that 2014 loss to Oakland, saying he took abuse the next day from all the Raiders fans in school.

When he was asked by 49ers employees to sign autographs, he signed every one of them "A" -- short for Anthony.

When he ended his day playing catch all by himself with tight end Vernon Davis, he told Davis, "Sign my forehead."

It all was over-the-top, but Anthony thinks it was exactly what Robert would have wanted him to do. Robert wouldn't have been shy around 49ers players, coaches and executives. Robert would have treated them like buddies, would have told them what was on his mind, would have wanted to be one of the Niners himself.

As the afternoon was winding down and after tight end Vernon Davis and Anthony had played catch at Levi's Stadium for nearly a half-hour, Davis told Anthony he was headed back to the locker room. Anthony followed him.

"Hey Anthony, you're not coming with me!" Davis told him facetiously. "I'm not signing anything else!"

But, still, Anthony followed him.

"You're signing this," Anthony said, pointing to Robert's lucky Michael Crabtree jersey.

Davis took one look at the jersey. It sat on a table, already autographed by every 49er but him. The tight end signed it, and a beaming Anthony folded it up and brought it back with him to San Bernardino.

My Wish had morphed into Robert's Wish, and Anthony had it all planned out. He would have the jersey framed, and he would make sure it hung over the couch -- for every football Sunday.