Staples Center has become sort of a second home for Clipper Fan Patrol member Summer over the past nine years. During every single Clippers home game, you can catch the longest tenured member of the Fan Patrol performing with the rest of the sqyad during breaks in the action. Gymnastics, dance, cheerleading – you name it, Summer and the Fan Patrol do it.
After about three hours chock-full of tumbling and stunting, Summer will make the drive back home. With her adrenaline pumping and her heart still going a million miles per hour, she tries to force herself to sleep because she knows what’s in store for her in the morning.
Summer is a Fan Patrol veteran.
The turnaround is so fast that her costume swap would make the “quick change” halftime act look pedestrian by comparison.
Bright and early with just a few hours of shut eye under her belt, Summer swaps out her red and blue Clippers vest for a bright yellow reflective one. She kicks her white cheerleading shoes to the side and puts some steel-toe boots on her feet. The skirt gets tossed for a pair of jeans. And the hair she spent so much time getting just right last night? It gets a big hardhat plopped right on top of it.
And with that, her transformation is complete – performer in front of 19,000 by night…longshoreman on the docks at the various ports around Los Angeles by day.
“A lot of people are surprised to see me down there sometimes, “ Summer said. “Other people on the team are from around the area and know about the job. So they know what goes on down there.”
What goes on down there, simply put, is some real backbreaking manual labor. For Summer, her two jobs – Fan Patrol and Longshoreman – truly are like night and day.
“It’s completely different,” Summer said. “The Clippers Fan Patrol is more of my fun job where I get to dress up and interact with fans and be part of a team. The longshoreman job is a lot of physical work. It’s lifting heavy things, lifting heavy equipment.”
“Sometimes I’ll be keeping track of the containers that come on and off the ship, and sometimes I’ll be driving a semi-truck with a 40-foot container attached to it,” Summer said.
If it seems like a questionable job for a highly talented gymnast with a Master’s Degree from Cal State Fullerton to fall into, you would be right. But down at the docks, Summer is about as comfortable as one could be hauling 30-pound containers repeatedly.
“I do really like it,” Summer said. “It’s different every time I go down there. It keeps you on your toes. It’s a pretty interesting job.”
The job is made a little more interesting when you consider how small Summer is compared to the rest of her coworkers.
“It’s pretty tough work, especially because I’m so short,” Summer said. “That doesn’t work in my favor. When I’m driving the semi-truck it’s kind of hard to reach the pedals.
“A lot of the guys down there are so big — it’s kind of a big man’s job. We have to lift the connectors to the containers, and they get pretty heavy after a while.”
But that hasn’t stopped Summer . The blue-collar work ethic is so instilled in her that she can’t take a break. She works because she can’t imagine not working.
It is easy to see where Summer gets that attitude from. Her grandfather, Charles, worked at the docks for many years. Her brother and uncle work there with her now, as does her father, Steve, who has worked as a longshoreman for over 25 years.
“He didn’t push me to do the job, but he kind of recommended it,” Summer said of her dad. “He thought it would be something good to fall back on even if I didn’t want to do it forever because I was still going to school.”
You get the impression talking to Summer that there is nothing that could stop her from doing what she sets her mind on. Since she was five years old, Summer knew that she wanted to do gymnastics and cheer , and she has successfully made that dream a reality, even if it has meant working somewhere a little outside of the box during the day.
Since the 2001-02 season, Summer has lived her dream and entertained the Clipper faithful, and if they ever need her to do something else for squad – something typically reserved for someone twice her size like being a base – it should be no surprise given her day job that she would be up for the challenge.
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