San Diego, CA
Patti McGee, pioneering pro skateboarder with a San Diego youth, dies at 79
Stand at the top of the Loring Street hill in Pacific Beach — one of the steepest in San Diego — and let yourself be transported back to the early 1960s, when children and teenagers flew down the precipitous grade on makeshift skateboards, the ocean sprawled in the distance ahead.
These were some of skateboarding’s first takers, the kids who helped pave the way for future generations of a sport that for decades was widely seen as a societal menace and a fringe subculture.
Among these skaters was Patti McGee. For the Point Loma teen, skateboarding down Loring Street was just another way to kill time when the surf blew out in the afternoon and she wasn’t ready to go home to do homework.
Loring Street “was a challenge. That was like surfing a big wave, if you could make it,” McGee told the skateboarding magazine Juice in 2017.
Seeking a challenge and staying active were part of what drew her to skateboarding. But McGee — who died Oct. 16 at her home in Brea at 79 following a recent stroke — was also a natural.
Considered the world’s first professional female skateboarder, McGee carved a name for herself in the sport when it was even more dominated by men than it is today.
Her career kicked off in 1964 when she took first place at the inaugural national skateboarding championships in Santa Monica, clinching the win with her signature trick, a handstand on the skateboard.
That move was later cemented into the culture’s history when she graced the cover of LIFE magazine in May 1965, feet high in the air, board rolling beneath her.
After the win in Santa Monica, McGee received a brand deal with skateboard manufacturer Hobie and traveled the country promoting its boards.
She was inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame in 2010. That year, San Diego’s then-Councilmember Kevin Faulconer gave her a special commendation honoring her achievements.
But becoming a trailblazer for women in skateboarding wasn’t exactly the goal for McGee; the San Diego Evening Tribune reported in 1965 that she wanted to pursue acting or be a “movie stunt girl.”
“She was a sweet angel, but she was also a wild woman,” her daughter Hailey Villa, 46, told the Union-Tribune last week. McGee is also survived by her son, Forest Villa, 45, as well as two grandchildren and her brother, Jack.
“She did a lot of different things in her life,” Villa said, pointing to her mother’s time working in turquoise mining and leather goods and even at a casino. “Skateboarding was just kind of a little blip.”
McGee was born on August 23, 1945, at Fort Lewis in Washington state, and her family moved to San Diego when she was about 5 years old. Her parents split when she was young, and she was mostly raised by her mother, who worked at Montgomery Junior High School.
McGee’s youth was in many ways a quintessential San Diego one.
Like many skaters of the 1960s, she had begun as a surfer — first surfing in 1958 and hitting spots such as Newport Street, North Beach and Ocean Beach and in La Jolla, at the shores and Windansea.
When she was 16, she ventured up the coast for more — to Tamarack, Oceanside, Doheny and County Line, she told Skateboarder magazine in 1965, when she was on its cover.
The president of an all-girls surf team in 1963, McGee described herself as a “rowdy surfer” — unafraid to be aggressive as one of the few girls in the water, when “guys would just push you out of the way or kick out into your ankles, like, ‘My wave,’” she told Juice.
McGee first found her way to a skateboard in 1962 through a DIY project: Her brother, Jack, stole the wheels off her roller skates and attached them to a wooden board he’d made in shop class.
Later, she rode a Bun Buster, equipped with those same wheels from her roller skates.
She and her friends cruised the streets of San Diego, even the parking garage of downtown San Diego’s Concourse — their Mount Everest, as she described it.
They were unruly, and they always got in trouble.
“Thank you for helping to pave the way for all of us when skateboarding was simply considered a ‘menace’ in the 1960’s,” Tony Hawk wrote in a recent Instagram post in her memory.
McGee was also a member of the Pump House Gang, a group of teen surfers who gathered around a sewage pump house at Windansea Beach in the 1960s. The writer Tom Wolfe later wrote an essay about the group and named his 1968 collection of essays after it.
But her 1964 championship win in Santa Monica inexorably changed her life.
Her one-year, $250-a-month brand deal with skateboard maker Hobie took her around the country, where she demonstrated skateboarding in department stores and shopping malls, largely for audiences of children.
Landing the cover of LIFE propelled McGee to yet another level of recognition. Soon after the iconic shoot, she booked appearances on the game show “What’s My Line?” and the “Mike Douglas Show” and taught Johnny Carson to skate on “The Tonight Show.”
At the time, mainstream culture was still deciding how it felt about skateboarding. Initially seen as a fun new fad for kids and often dubbed “sidewalk surfing,” by the late 1960s and 70s it was more widely considered a nuisance, something for kids up to no good.
McGee and her generation saw that shift firsthand and are part of the reason that skateboarding became closely associated with punk, said Haley Watson, a filmmaker who was working on a documentary about McGee before she passed away.
“There’s no way that skateboarding as we know it would take the shape that it has without Patti,” Watson said.
McGee returned to San Diego after her national tour in the mid-’60s, but she didn’t stay long.
She soon moved to Lake Tahoe with her first husband, Glen Villa, where they mined turquoise and made leather goods. Later she moved to Cave Creek, Ariz., where she raised two children, gave tours to tourists panning for gold. There, she met her second husband, William Chace, who died in 2015.
But there was little concrete in their rural town, and few places to skate, Villa remembers — her mom would take her and her brother to a nearby elementary school to skateboard.
And when she was in third grade, her mother brought a skateboard team to her school to give a demonstration. Among its members was Tony Hawk.
“I think that was the day I understood my mom was more special in the skateboarding realm,” Villa recalls.
Villa became a skater herself, and she and McGee founded the Original Betty Skateboard Company, which spawned its own all-girls skate team, sponsoring young skaters, some of whom went on to compete in the Olympics.
The family bond was clear to Watson.
“It was very evident to me that she really loved her family and that she had a very special connection with her daughter,” the filmmaker said. “They had so much of their own language.”
McGee’s story was brought to a younger, wider audience in 2021, when Orange County author and school librarian Tootie Nienow published the children’s book “There Goes Patti McGee! The Story of the First Women’s National Skateboard Champion,” illustrated by Erika Medina.
Nienow became close with McGee as she wrote the book.
McGee could make a person feel like they were the only one in the room, Nienow said — a sentiment echoed by McGee’s friend and skatemate Di Dootson Rose, who was also inducted into the Skateboarding Hall of Fame earlier this year.
She was “magnetic,” Rose said, recalling how McGee would connect with people, sometimes placing her hands on their faces and really looking them in the eyes. “People would let her in.”
The skateboarder’s charm and talent captivated her friends and family — and the world.
Rose points to McGee’s LIFE cover in 1965 — a far cry, she said, from some of the magazine’s more serious covers of that time.
“Then one day they come out with this sky blue cover of a blonde, upside down (doing a) handstand — white capris and a red sweater,” Rose said. “If that isn’t a breath of fresh air, then I don’t know what is.”
The nonprofit Exposure Skate will hold a ceremony for McGee at its annual skate event for women and nonbinary skaters in Encinitas this Saturday at 5 p.m.
San Diego, CA
Their dog vanished during a trip to San Diego. They found her swimming a half mile offshore.
A couple visiting San Diego was treated to a Thanksgiving miracle when San Diego lifeguards located and rescued their missing dog from the ocean Sunday.
The couple were in town watching football when they realized their black labrador mix, Sadie, was missing, the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department wrote in a statement.
Using an AirTag on the dog’s collar, the couple tracked Sadie’s location and began walking down the beach.
Two miles away in Ocean Beach, a surfer alerted the lifeguard tower that a dog had been swept into a rip current and was drifting out to sea. “I just had a surfer run up to the truck,” a lifeguard said on dispatch audio, “he’s saying there’s a dog that’s on the jetty.”
Lifeguards and the U.S. Coast Guard searched the area but could not find the wayward pup.
The search lasted more than an hour, said Garrett Smerdon and Jack Alldredge, San Diego Fire Deparment lifeguards credited with the rescue. They felt that given black labs’ ability to swim and Sadie’s age — 5 years old — she was likely still alive and swimming, or paddling.
“After an extensive search with no sightings, lifeguards began making their way back in—until a miracle happened,” the fire department wrote. A rescue Jet Ski had spotted Sadie a half mile offshore near South Mission Beach. The rescuer loaded Sadie onto a boat and brought her back to shore.
“She was super happy to see us, for sure,” Smerdon said. “She was tired.”
Sadie’s parents said in a video that they were with rescuers when the radio call came in that she had been found alive, bringing them to tears.
“We just really wanted a happy ending,” Smerdon said, “and we’re glad that Sadie got to go back home and, you know, survive this pretty traumatic event.”
Scams targeting the elderly in San Diego County resulted in losses of more than $130 million over the course of a single year, San Diego County’s multi-agency Elder Justice Task Force announced Tuesday.
Officials released the statistics Tuesday as part of an ongoing outreach campaign regarding increasingly sophisticated internet and phone scams that are leading to escalating losses for victims.
The county’s Elder Justice Task Force, which was formed in 2020, says it has identified more than 4,600 local victims and more than $325 million in losses since its inception, resulting in state and federal prosecutions of over 70 defendants.
San Diego County District Attorney Summer Stephan said the true numbers of victims and losses are likely higher due to an under-reporting by victims who feel ashamed or embarrassed that they’ve fallen prey to scammers.
“The only people that need to be ashamed are the criminals who are bilking these good people out of their hard-earned money, and we want everyone to know no one is immune,” Stephan said.
The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office said in a statement that seniors can protect themselves by remembering the mantra of “Stop. Hang Up. Tell Someone” and by:
- Remembering that legitimate agencies will not ask someone to move their money elsewhere to “keep it safe”
- Hang up and call back using a number you know is real — never the one they give you
- Use call-blocking tools to reduce scam attempts
Common scams involve phone calls from people posing as authority figures or internet pop-up ads warning of supposed issues that require urgent resolution. Scammers have impersonated law enforcement, banking officials and even used AI-generated voices that mimic family members. Many of the schemes involve claims that victims’ identities have been compromised and that their money must now be transferred elsewhere in order to safeguard it.
“We’ve had enough of criminals aggressively targeting some of the most vulnerable people in San Diego County and, in some cases, bilking them out of their life savings,” Stephan said. “We want to educate senior citizens and their families about how to recognize scams and what specific actions they should take if they suspect they are being targeted.”
More examples of scams and scam prevention techniques can be found here.
The party will rage on.
San Diego FC, rewarding and feeding off another loud capacity crowd, beat Minnesota United 1-0 Monday night to advance to the semifinals of the MLS Cup playoffs.
Thanks to Anders Dreyer’s 72nd-minute goal and the shutout, the first-year club booked Snapdragon Stadium for the Western Conference final Saturday against Vancouver.
If any MLS fan base deserves another home game, it’s SDFC’s supporters.
Capacity crowds of 32,500 have attended all three of the team’s playoff matches on the heels of a season in which the club finished fourth overall in attendance and first among teams that don’t play in NFL venues.
Monday night, the crowd’s chanting, singing and drum-banging impressed both sides.
“Great atmosphere,” said Minnesota United coach Eric Ramsay, who worked three years with global powerhouse Manchester United in England.
“We have landed in football city,” San Diego FC captain Jeppe Tverskov, who played for several years in Europe.
“I love to play in front of a lot of fans,” said an appreciative Dreyer, who clapped afterward for the supporters.
The match’s lone goal hit high notes, too.
SDFC forward Corey Baird ran down a through pass near the end line and heeled the ball backward to a perfect spot.
Dreyer ripped a left-foot shot, beating the league’s top goalkeeper inside the near post.
“I had just one thing on my mind: hitting it as hard as possible,” said Dreyer.
Making it a trifecta of excellence, the defense recorded its second consecutive shutout behind a few top-notch plays.
Right back Ian Pilcher’s clearout near the goal-line, in the 48th minute, may have been SDFC’s top defensive play of the year. A goal would’ve allowed Minnesota United to do what it does best — shepherd a lead to the finish line.
“It’s so well-deserved,” said Tverskov, commending Pilcher’s hard work behind the scenes and Pilcher’s adjustment to moving from center back.
Goalkeeper Pablo Sisniega, delivering a reprieve in the 64th minute, bought more time for SDFC’s offense to break through against Minnesota’s well-coordinated defense.
Though he lost his footing, Sisniega recovered quickly to block a Minnesota shot. And Pilcher, in protecting the 1-0 lead, denied the visitors a breakout near midfield by smartly taking down a player, well worth the yellow card.
“We just defended with heart the whole game through,” Tverskov said. “We did very well, considering this team is so dangerous on almost every set piece.”
So, on balance, it was another festival of football — SDFC midfielder Luca de la Torre’s phrase — in Mission Valley.
But there was a significant flaw in the presentation.
The pitch at Snapdragon Stadium, beaten up by the San Diego State-San Jose State football game two days earlier, was not worthy of a playoff match in America’s top men’s soccer league.
It was far too bumpy. And Sisniega said he slipped on sand, nearly enabling Minnesota to score a cheap goal to say nothing about increasing injury risk.
Ramsay praised SDFC, but deemed the subpar pitch an unfortunate aspect to the match.
Before he answered questions from reporters, Tverskov brought up the pitch, calling it the worst home surface of the season.
“The pitch needs to go,” Tversko said. “There’s no in between.”
Ramsay said SDFC actually would’ve benefited the most from a good-quality surface, noting that San Diego, which led the MLS in ball possession this season, tends to “dominate the ball.”
Dreyer was kinder than Tverskov and others about the pitch, saying bumpy surfaces are part of the sport.
It appears that neither a shoddy field, sickness nor jet lag can deter Denmark’s Dreyer, who in recent days was shut down by a virus that had him throwing up eight days ago in Europe. From last Monday through Wednesday, he was plagued by headaches.
Then he boarded the long flights back to San Diego.
He said he wasn’t at full speed on Monday. But when Baird teed him up, he looked as sharp as he has all year.
Next, Dreyer will lead SDFC against Vancouver for the third time. SDFC won in Canada and the teams played to a tie in Mission Valley. But this time, German star forward Thomas Müller will be with Vancouver.
“The good news,” said Dreyer, “is I can relax a little bit” in the next few days.
SDFC fans may need some time to recover, too. Come Saturday, they’ll be ready.
MLS Western Conference Final: No. 1 San Diego FC vs. No. 2 Vancouver Whitecaps
When: 6 p.m. Saturday
TV: AppleTV
Radio: 760-AM, 1700-AM (Spanish)
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