One-Man Pep Squad : Next Chamber Chief Has Passion for Boosterism, Involvement

Jim Stueck was wondering if he still had it in him.

His team was flagging on the court. The hometown crowd was a little dispirited, and very quiet.

He didn’t need a cue.

Standing up, the six-foot, 280-pound Stueck reached deep down inside himself and bellowed the refrain “Here we go Moorpark, here we go!”

Like a generalissimo rallying the troops, Stueck lifted his arms and gave another cheer. “Come on everybody, stomp your feet!”

Almost immediately, the small crowd responded. The gymnasium thundered with stomping and yells: “Here we go Moorpark, here we go!”

Stueck still had it.

The game turned around as Moorpark rallied. One of the point guards stole a pass and fed it to a teammate down the court, who dropped it into the basket.

“Yeah!” Stueck bellowed. “Yeah, way to go.”

The cheerleaders jumped out of their seats and screamed as the crowd went wild. It was just what Stueck likes to see.

“I think people sometimes are just waiting for someone to lead them,” he said later. “They’re willing to do things, they just need to be asked.”

Nobody has had to ask Stueck, a 48-year-old Moorpark insurance salesman and financial consultant.

Whether it’s leading the crowd cheering local high school basketball or football teams or taking charge of the annual Moorpark Country Days, Stueck feels compelled to jump in and help out.

“It’s just the way I was brought up,” he said. “Volunteerism isn’t dead. There’s still some of us out there that feel this is what you’re supposed to do.”

But Stueck has a habit of stretching himself a little thin.

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Since moving to Moorpark in 1981, he has injected himself into civic groups with abandon: helping to start the city’s first Presbyterian church; working with the local Jaycees, the local high school, the Kiwanis Club, the Boys & Girls Club, the Chamber of Commerce and Moorpark Country Days; helping his wife, Mickey, with the Miss Moorpark Pageant; taking in an exchange student; helping the high school booster club, and becoming probably the most popular cheerleader the football team has ever had.

“It’s funny how that all started,” said Stueck, a former tackle who played in high school and at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

“We were at the old high school and my son was playing at the time,” he said. “And I remember looking out at all the people just covering the hillside--there must have been two or three thousand--and trying to get them to stand up for a kickoff.”

Stueck also rallied the fans to give simple cheers like “Defense!” on a critical down, or getting everyone to holler, “Here we go Moorpark!” and pounding a drum.

After the game, the coach asked him if he could do it at every game.

“It made a huge difference,” said former Moorpark High football coach Rob Dearborn. “He forced people to get up and make noise. I don’t think anybody realized how much fun you can have until Jim got up there and started yelling.”

Stueck looks at himself as a big cheerleader for the community as well. He believes that if he gets involved, people will follow, though he can’t explain why anyone would follow him.

Dearborn calls Stueck a risk taker and says that people respond to someone who’s willing to put himself out on a limb. “Plus, he’s just a big, boisterous guy, and when he tells you to do something, you tend to do it,” Dearborn said.

Stueck’s detractors brush him off as just another big jock, a label Dearborn calls a cheap shot.

“I’ve never seen him in that way,” he said. “He’s very much an intellectual.”

Stueck helped last year’s high school Academic Decathlon team prepare for the state competition, and he’s helped on a school committee dealing with the students’ emotional well-being. Away from school, he’s been very involved in the local business community.

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He soon will be taking over as president of the Chamber of Commerce from Realtor Debbie Rodgers Teasley, who has served for the past year and a half. “Jim is very detail-oriented and has a lot of perseverance, which you need for this job,” Teasley said. “I don’t think it’s analogous to being a cheerleader. There are two different levels there.”

While recognizing Stueck’s array of community involvements, Teasley said it’s not unusual for Moorpark residents to be involved in their community.

An aide to the local Boy Scouts, president of the Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Ventura County Economic Development Committee, a businesswoman and mother of two, Teasley knows what it’s like to be spread thin.

“It can be done,” she said. “You just have to be extremely organized and rely on other people when you have to.”

That’s something Stueck knows how to do, she said.

His business partner and old high school friend Bruce Thompson said Stueck’s strength lies in his attitude.

“He makes sure things are getting done and that he has a good time doing them,” said Thompson, who owns an insurance and financial planning firm with Stueck.

His roaring guffaws and backslapping antics would make it easy for people to write him off as just another glad-hander if he didn’t accomplish so much, others say.

“He spreads himself all over . . . and he’s big enough to spread all over,” said Dee Tally, who’s worked with him at the school and in the Jaycees.

“You think he would be spreading himself too thin, but he gets things done,” she said. “Look what he did for Moorpark Country Days, the high school and the college, for that matter.”

When school administrators worried that Moorpark College, out in the city’s remote east end, was isolated and being ignored by residents, they enlisted Stueck to help out with public relations.

The first thing he did was invite everybody to a football game, handing out free tickets and promising a good time.

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At the next game he had Mayor Paul Lawrason on the field for a presentation and other civic leaders in the packed stands. When the game started, Stueck took his seat, holding back for a bit. Then he went down to the sidelines to get fans on their feet.

“I was a little worried,” he said. “I mean, there’s hundreds of these faces looking at me, and nobody really knew me there. The cheerleaders were looking at me funny--I wasn’t sure if they would respond. But then I figure, what the heck, and you know, on the kickoff I got everybody to stand up and stomp their feet. It felt pretty good.”