Richmond Resident Celebrates 25 Years as Beefeater

By Jonathan Farrell

On any given day, Tom Sweeney greets thousands of people from the four corners of the globe, including celebrities and royalty. This year Sweeney celebrates his 25th year as the doorman at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel.

"It's a job few people have," Sweeney said. Although not his intended career, he is pleased how things have turned out.

"I thought I would be on my way to the department!" Sweeney exclaimed. "Yet," he said laughing, "I have spent my career opening doors."

"The department" he speaks of is the SF Fire Department and SF Police Department. "That was my planned goal," he says.

"I accepted the beefeater uniform over a police/fire department uniform and I would not trade it for anything," Sweeney said

Regardless of his high-profile job, Sweeney's home life is ordinary. He shares his Richmond District home with his fiance and her two children. Sweeney is a very public person, while his fiance is the opposite. She agreed to talk about her future husband only if her anonymity was protected.

"One public figure in the house is enough," she said. "I am private and want to keep it that way."

She admitted wedding plans have been slow in the making.

"We've been living in sin for the past nine years," she joked.

Sweeney continues telling the story of his beefeater career, one that even after 25 years he still finds remarkable. He has several albums, all overflowing with news articles, ads and countless photographs with celebrities. Like a neighborhood kid with a coveted collection of baseball cards, he spoke of his most treasured moments.

"Here is a picture of me with SF 49ers Joe Montana and Dwight Clark at the mayor's office receiving an award of merit. That was 1981," he said. According to Sweeney, the mayor at the time, Dianne Feinstein, said, "We have a quarterback, a receiver and a tackle."

"That was a turning point in my career," Sweeney said. "I was only going to be at the Drake for a year or two. Then it was off to the Academy, like my buddies from Riordan, St. Ignatius and Sacred Heart High School."

One of his buddies from those school days, Jerry Stynes, recalled Sweeney "did have his heart set on that goal" of becoming a police officer or firefighter.

"Yet it did not turn out that way," Sweeney elaborated. "I had been accepted to both the SF Police Academy and SF Fire Department Academy, but at 17, I was too young."

"One of my brother's friends recommended that I go to City College," Sweeney said.

Taking the advice, he enrolled in a restaurant and hotel management course.

"As something to fall back on, as they say, in case my intended goal was not for me," Sweeney explained.

"That two-year program offered an Associates Degree, which included cooking and management classes," said Kathy Knox, a City College alumni who, with her husband Larry, graduated with Sweeney.

"At that time," Knox said "the program offered job placement." This is how Sweeney found a job at the front desk of the Sir Francis Drake.

"No sooner did I get there, the hotel offered me a job wearing the beefeater uniform opening the door," Sweeney said.

Reflecting on those years, Knox was not surprised by Sweeney's promotion.

"Tom even then had a magnetism and a great smile," she said.

Although Sweeney's plans for the police academy were stalled, he still had the opportunity to fight crime.

"One day, a robbery was taking place in the lobby as thieves were taking off with some luggage," Sweeney said. "I chased them into the street and tackled them.

"That is why Mayor Feinstein referred to me as the tackle. I tackled them," Sweeney said.

Stynes said the hotel rewarded him with an all-expense-paid trip to Acapulco, Mexico. Yet, as fate would have it, while on vacation he was called into action again.

"I was on the beach near the resort and I heard a scream and saw a girl starting to drown. So I went into the water and saved her," Sweeney said.

That heroic deed led to Sweeney being on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather.

"I was not surprised seeing him on the national news," Sweeney's father, Russ, said. "Tom is pretty aggressive when he sets out to do something."

Knox remembers seeing the same story on a local broadcast.

"If we did not know Tom, we would have thought it unbelievable," she said.

"After that is when everything took off," Sweeney said. Since that time, he has been much sought after.

Despite all the accolades and flirtations with wealth and fame, Sweeney still considers himself "just a regular guy from the Avenues."

"Tom is really just an ordinary guy who has been blessed," Knox said.

Careful not to let the attention as the hotel's spokesperson go to his head, when he speaks about his appearances as the beefeater doorman, Sweeney describes the beefeater's persona, not himself.

Sweeney says the image and attention the beefeater uniform brings is something completely separate from him.

"The beefeater will go on long after I am gone," he said.

A fourth-generation San Franciscan, his modest Richmond District home is much like the one he grew up in at 41st Avenue and Noriega Street. Both of his parents still live in the Sunset District.

Russ and Mary Ann Sweeney consider their son's career choice a "bit crazy."

"We are pleased and think it's marvelous he has made something out of it," his father said.