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Redwood City resident Robin Schreiber reflects on her unexpected fame as the Golden State Warriors’ most well-known fan.
It can take Robin Schreiber upwards of an hour to reach her car after a Warriors home game, even though it’s really just a 10-minute walk. Swamped in every direction by selfie-hunting fans, Schreiber — a cheerful 68 year-old retired school teacher — is met with excitement and adoration, as if she just put up 40 points in a thrilling Golden State victory.
“It’s getting crazier and crazier,” Schreiber says in good humor, during an interview from her home last month. “I can’t be in the arena by myself. I have to have somebody with me. I get followed into the women’s restroom by men [who ask]— ‘Can I just do a selfie please?’”
A longtime resident of Redwood City, Schreiber has come to be known by people around the world over the past year by the nickname, “Dance Cam Mom,” her now super-famous identity as a beloved figure of Golden State Warriors home games.
She turned into a sensation seemingly overnight after a video of her dancing with gleeful abandon at a Warriors game went viral late last fall. What followed was a year of ever-increasing internet-age fame, which included a whirlwind ride on the Warriors 2017 championship run: Schreiber met the players, danced with coach Steve Kerr and even rode in the team’s victory parade.
Just over a year now into her newfound celebrity, she still speaks about it with a mix of astonishment and amusement. “I actually thought this would die down and I wouldn’t dance anymore, and I’m fine with that,” Schreiber says, “but it doesn’t die down.”
Born in Oakland, Schreiber’s family moved to Belmont when she was 6 years old. She grew up with her dad, a UC Berkeley graduate (along with her four siblings — Schreiber graduated from Notre Dame), rooting on Cal sports. Her parents always tailgated for the Big Game at Stanford. She started watching the Warriors with her dad when she was in high school.
“I liked basketball, I think it was always my favorite sport, because it moves so fast — you can’t turn your head because something could’ve happened,” Schreiber said. “I remember watching Rick Barry, Sleepy Floyd, Chris Mullin, Tim Hardaway — ”
Schreiber is interrupted by the doorbell. She reappears with a package containing a Dance Cam Mom bobblehead that Clark Toys is about to start marketing for the holidays. It is a 10-inch high piece of wiggling evidence in support of just how far this whole phenomenon has progressed in a year’s time.
Looking over the small statue, Schreiber appears both amused and unfazed. “I mean, you have your regular collection and then you have way over down the shelf Dance Cam Mom,” she observes.
A Redwood City resident for 23 years (her father, an architect, designed the family’s home), Schreiber taught history and art to fifth-through-eighth-graders for 35 years, most of them at West and Crocker Middle schools in Hillsborough. Today, she works as a freelance artist (many of her large scale pieces decorate the interior of her home).
For over 30 years Schreiber has been a Warriors season ticket holder, attending games with her husband and son (now 26 years old). Her husband picked up her famous ugly sweater as a joke Christmas present for their son two years ago, not realizing he had purchased a women’s size by mistake.
Not long after, they convinced her to wear it to a game, and “when the Dance Cam thing came on, they both pushed me, ‘Come on, dance!’ so I just did it.”
Her exuberant dance moves garnered some attention from local media at the time. But it was her dance cam appearance from Nov. 9, 2016 that went viral.
“The day after the election, I didn’t even want to go to the game — I was feeling a little flat,” Schreiber explains. “So I went to the game, and the man sitting next to me asked how I was and I said, ‘I’ve been better,’ … and right then they had the Dance Cam thing and I think I just danced my frustrations out.”
Soon after, as Schreiber says, “it just kind of started taking off.” Before long, she was featured well beyond just local media, everywhere from Good Morning America to The Tonight Show.
“People were like, ‘Do you know how many views and likes you’ve gotten?’” she recalls, before adding, “I was really impressed that Lin-Manuel [Miranda] liked it.”
Now even outside the arena running errands around town she says she’s recognized about four times a day. “I’m just in the store and I see people and they’ll look at me and I’m thinking, ‘Oh that’s right, people know who I am’ — I forget about that,” Schreiber says with a laugh.
Dance Cam Mom has become a fixture in the fan base and beyond. She performed a routine with the Warriors cheerleaders, and was even invited to go toe-to-toe in a dance-off against team members, such as Curry and Draymond Green. In June she landed a spot on a championship parade float alongside SF Giants great Barry Bonds and Oakland A’s Hall of Famer Ricky Henderson.
Along the way she’s also gained the attention of the team itself. “The coach Steve Kerr comes in and he screams across the ballroom like this, ‘You, come here!’” she said, recalling a friendly meeting between the two at an NBA All-Star Game event (TNT flew her out to New Orleans that weekend).
“He goes, ‘You need to stop that right now,’ and I said, ‘Stop what?’ and he goes, ‘That dancing. Stop it!,’ and I go, ‘OK, why?’ and he said, ‘Because you do it during the timeout, I’m trying to get plays together, and they’re all watching you. When you’re on, I don’t even say a word.’”
She would wind up running into Kerr again and dancing with him at the end of a bar, much to the delight of his wife and daughter.
Schreiber says she has always loved to dance and has never taken professional lessons. “I’m the first one on the floor,” she says. “I don’t even care if I’m alone, I just like to dance. It makes me feel happy.”
And she appreciates that her dancing makes others feel happy — and in some cases, inspired. “I really love it when women contact me and say, ‘You know, you’re a mature woman and you’re doing your own thing, you don’t really care what anybody thinks, and you give me courage to do what I want to do.’”
Over a year after becoming an overnight sensation, Schreiber spends her time in much of the same ways as she did before — making artwork, cooking, walking five miles each day. But now she makes time for appearances at Warriors charity events, and has even taken to creating an original rap or two.
“LeBron thinks he’s the king/when we’re done we’ll get that ring,” she raps, wiggling her arms in animated fashion.
Schreiber records and posts her Warriors raps (along with dance videos, of course) on her Instagram account, where they get tens of thousands of views. It’s another reality of gaining celebrity that Schreiber hasn’t been able to fully grasp, but enjoys nonetheless.
“‘Something like this is just kind of random and I really don’t understand it, but it’s fun if it makes people laugh,” Schreiber said.
Follow the Dance Cam Mom, Redwood City’s own Robin Schreiber, on her Instagram account @dancecammom