41 years and no sign of slowing for Seahawks’ longest-serving employee

Plenty of Seahawks fans will say they’ve been fans from the beginning.

But there’s only one person left with the organization who can actually make that claim.

“It’s weird. It’s hard to imagine. Forty-one years. It’s pretty special, isn’t it. It doesn’t happen,” said Sandy Gregory as we visited in her office recently at the Seahawks headquarters in Renton.

Gregory, the Seahawks’ director of community outreach, is far and away the longest-serving employee of the franchise.

It’s a career she never imagined or knew existed when she first learned how to keep score of baseball games in a high school PE class growing up in Southern California.

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Her first big break came when she was asked to help the baseball team at her hometown community college.

“I’d call in the scores to all the newspapers — box scores, line scores, whatever they wanted — and one of the newspaper guys took an interest in me. And he said, ‘What are you going to do when you get out of school?’ I’m like ‘I have no idea!’ He called me one day, he was working at USC, and he said, ‘You’ve got to come down and apply for a job,'” Gregory recounted.

So she applied not knowing much about what a sports information department or what USC’s Sports Information Director Don Anderson did.

“He gave me two pictures of OJ Simpson that were signed, and he said, ‘You know, I’ve only interviewed one other person and they don’t know shorthand, so if you want the job it’s yours.'”

She worked with Anderson at USC, then followed him to the Southern California Sun of the fledgling World Football League.

When the NFL granted Seattle an expansion team, the new Seahawks hired Anderson to handle all of its PR.

He, in turn, asked Gregory to come with him.

“I didn’t know anything about Seattle. I was really hesitant. All I knew is that it rained. I came up and it was March, and you know March is not a great time of year,” she laughed.

But she took a leap and got a place with another woman from the Southern California Sun. She figured if she hated it, she could always go home.

The work was hardly glamorous. The operation and the league a shadow of what it’s become today. There were just a handful of coaches and even fewer staff members.

“We didn’t have community relations, we didn’t have HR, we didn’t have IT, we didn’t have marketing,” Gregory said.

“So it was a little bit of a combination of everything … I did cheerleaders. I ordered their boots and their pom poms and all that stuff back then. I booked the anthems and the halftimes and the color guards. So it was pretty neat. You just did a little of everything. But there wasn’t the demand like there is today.”

It’s that demand that keeps Sandy so passionate about her work. Winning a Super Bowl will do that for you.

In her role, Gregory oversees all of the team’s community relations activities — helping fulfill requests for everything from mascot and Sea Gals appearances at school assemblies to players visiting with Make-A-Wish kids.

“It’s special, but it takes the players to make it happen. So the relationship with the players is really important because you’re constantly asking them to meet sick kids, or go to hospitals or go to schools,” Gregory said.

Luckily, she’s always been blessed with players, coaches, and cheerleaders who go out of their way to share their good fortune with others. So the biggest challenge is trying to fulfill all the requests that pour in daily.

“We always try and do something. It’s so much fun. Every day is different . The people, the players. How special is this? You can’t ask for a better job.”

It’s a job she could have left long ago. But even after 41 years, she has no thoughts of retirement.

“People tell me that you’ll know when you’re there. So I guess I’m not there. I’m not thinking about it at all. I love what I’m doing.”

She does admit there is one thing that could make the job even better: another Super Bowl win.

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