First time Jimmy Miller competitors raise their hands.
by Kevin Cody
photos by Steve Gaffney @stevegaffney
Local surfers formed five-member teams to compete for bragging rights, and to raise funds for the Jimmy Miller Foundation last Saturday, in El Porto. Many of the participants were friends of Jimmy Miller, the foundation’s namesake, who succumbed to mental illness 20 years ago.
Miller was a lifeguard, surf instructor and fashion model.
Among friends who shared memories of Miller was his UC Berkeley roommate, Ed Quinn. Miller lured Quinn away from a promising real estate career to becoming a fashion model.
“At Berkeley, we’d go surfing and Jimmy’s beeper would go off, like a drug dealer’s. But it was for modeling assignments. He was making $150 an hour, which was lawyer wages in those days,” Quinn recalled.
Quinn said he followed Miller into modeling for the money, and to El Porto because the water is warmer than at his home break, Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco.
“The day I was supposed to start work at Coldwell Banker, I got a call for a shoot in Milan. I went to Milan,” Quinn said.
Modeling led to acting and to his starring role as United States President Hunter Franklin in BET’s long-running “The Oval.”
When he wasn’t competing in Saturday’s surf contest, Quinn sat beneath a bucket of ice water, where, for $5, fans could throw a baseball at a lever that dumped the ice water on ‘the President’s’ head.
In a Hollywood film ending, the contest was won by a loaded, all women’s team, composed of Teagan and London Meza, Millie Hortsman, Keani Honda Snow and rising ripper Isla Kang.
Source: EasyReaderNews.com
