Episode 36 - Gabrielle Samiy on Grit, Championships & Huntington Beach Pride

Mel and Don are joined by Gabrielle Samiy — Miss Huntington Beach, two-time city council candidate, California State Championship basketball player, and lifelong Huntington Beach local — for a wide-ranging conversation about resilience, community, and what it means to grow up rooted in Surf City. Gabrielle shares her unlikely path to the pageant stage: a self-described tomboy who never saw herself wearing a crown, she lost her first Miss Huntington Beach competition before returning the following year with hard-won confidence and winning the title. That second-chance mindset was planted in part by the late Lee Love, who told Gabrielle she wanted to see the headline "former Miss Huntington Beach as Huntington Beach mayor" — a goal Gabrielle is still chasing.

She opens up about her years grinding through junior college basketball, including a harrowing night at Cypress College when every one of her belongings — her car, phone, keys, and wallet — was stolen from the parking lot after practice, her car later recovered a week later in West Covina, wrecked and stripped. After transferring to Irvine Valley College and surviving COVID seasons played in masks with entire teams forced to sit out after a single positive test, Gabrielle found her way to Orange Coast College and coach Sammy Ducet — a 25-year-old who had coached at Kobe Bryant's Mamba Academy and applied three times for the OCC job. Together they built a team that went five-deep all season, took down rivals who had complained about Gabrielle's eligibility, and won the California State Championship in 2023 — twenty years after OCC's last title. Inscribed inside Gabrielle's championship ring: "Third times the charm." She, her coach, and several teammates later got matching tattoos — three stars in a line — to mark the journey.

Beyond basketball, Gabrielle is a walking HB origin story: her mother was born and raised in Huntington Beach, her late Iranian-born father immigrated in the late 1970s with English as his third language, and a chance coffee meeting at Five Points Java City led to a lifelong friendship after a stranger turned out to be the son of the doctor who had saved her father's life from polio as a child. She's working toward a business finance degree, eyeing Cal State Fullerton, and has promised the Sand Dollars organization she will join their board the moment her Miss Huntington Beach reign ends — keeping a vow she made to Lee Love before she passed. A must-watch episode.