LOS ANGELES _ The email was from a lifelong Dodgers season-ticket holder, saddened by the postponed season. He wanted to connect with his favorite part of Dodger Stadium.
He wanted to find the guy who takes his ticket.
He knew him only as Errol.
"I just want to make sure Errol is doing OK," Stan Brooks said.
For more than 20 years, Brooks has accessed his field-level seats through a right field gate manned by someone he only knew from the first name on his badge, yet someone he considered part of his family.
"Errol has always been there," said Brooks, 61, a director-producer. "Year in, year out, no matter what is going on in my life, when I come to Dodger Stadium and Errol is standing there and smiling, all is right with the world."
Over the years, Errol has hugged Brooks' father, fist-bumped his children, participated in a family video, posed for family photos, bonding for five minutes every night at a baseball game.
Errol became such a constant and comforting fixture in their lives that the Brooks family instituted an ironclad rule. They would only enter a Dodgers game through Errol's station. Even if the line was shorter elsewhere or if Errol was helping another ticket taker, they would patiently stand and wait until they would pass by Errol and enjoy chatting about everything from the weather to his bowling scores.
"He is as important to Dodger Stadium as the architecture," Brooks said. "Basically, our gateway to the Dodger games is through Errol."
So now, they missed him. And as the coronavirus pandemic shutdown dragged on, they worried about him. What about his loss of income? Did he need help? How was he handling being away from his Dodgers family?
Brooks, known in local baseball circles as the founder of the nonprofit Hollywood Indies Little League in South Los Angeles, contacted me in hopes of identifying and locating Errol.
The search required all of one phone call.
He is Errol Coffey, 76, a ticket taker for 42 years, and as much a part of Dodger Stadium as the Elysian Hills.
He has worked roughly 3,500 games, assisted in the stadium entrance of some of roughly 130 million fans, bore witness to six World Series and some of the greatest moments in Chavez Ravine history.
Yet he had no idea that, for at least one family, he was an important part of that history.
"A fan misses me?" Errol said when I reached him. "Really?"
