Chiefly, An Attorney But Schott Also Doubles As Hockey Team’s Equipment Manager

He does the grunt work, the invisible, thankless chores that give the place a professional look.

Typically he’s at the Arena at 5 a.m. to do the laundry, vacuum the locker room and lay out practice jerseys.

He’s the guy you see on game nights scurrying out on the ice to scoop up pucks after warmups.

He’s usually in a hurry.

Meet Ted Schott, a real clubhouse lawyer.

Mornings and nights he’s the Spokane Chiefs equipment manager.

By day - and late at night, too, if he’s writing legal opinions - he’s Theodore J. Schott, attorney at law.

With two jobs and two identities his diverse specialties run the gamut from pleading cases to sharpening referees’ skates.

He and the Chiefs have grown together in the three years since he joined the club as an unpaid volunteer.

The franchise moved from the Coliseum to the Arena, reached the Western Hockey League finals and this year won the right to host the championship tournament of North American junior hockey, the Memorial Cup, in May of 1998.

Ted Schott graduated from Gonzaga University’s law school, passed the bar exam, delved into the fascinating world of Indian law and hired on as an associate with the Spokane firm of Nordstrom Nees Janecek & Embree.

Once he had more time than money. Now there aren’t enough hours in the day.

“Every circus needs a cage cleaner,” Schott says. “That’s what I do.”

He fell into the cage-cleaning half of his life by accident.

“I had a (classroom) break in the second semester of law school when the Chiefs were practicing,” he said. “I’d go down to the old Coliseum - it was open and you could watch practice - and I’d sit there, reading law books and watching.

“One day the players started yelling for water. They wanted Hitter (John Hearn, now-retired equipment manager nicknamed Hit Man). I just walked into the locker room and said, ‘Hey, John, the players need water. You want me to take it down?”’

Schott hustled downstairs with water and towels and planted himself on the end of the bench for his first close-up of the game and its players.

“Afterwards, Parry Shockey (then assistant coach) said, ‘We notice you’re here a lot.’

“I said, ‘Yeah I try to make all the practices.’ He probably figured I didn’t have much of a life.

“He said, ‘Can you help out? It doesn’t pay anything.”’

Such a deal.

Schott jumped at it.

“In law school we didn’t have any money anyway,” he said. “Between Top Ramen and hot dogs my wife Barbara and I were able to save a little and scrape together enough for a mini-season ticket package to go to a few games on weekends.

“We loved it. At the time I was in such awe of the game that I said, ‘Sure, anything.”’

His connection to the game has become a family affair. Sons Julis, 8, and Beau, 16, work on game nights, Julius as the Chiefs’ water boy, Beau in the penalty box.

“We saw our first game in ‘92,” Schott said. “The only thing we knew about hockey is that the black thing had to go into the net, and 90 percent of the time we couldn’t follow the black thing.

“My wife is passive but she liked everything about it - the color, speed, the fighting, the whole works.”

In time they came to a crossroads.

Schott had accepted a job as a deputy prosecutor of Kittitas County.

“We had half our stuff packed,” he said. “We both looked at all the boxes and each other and asked, ‘Why? Why are we leaving?’ Ellensburg doesn’t have anything but wind. Our interests are here, the kids were in school. I called the prosecutor that day and told him we were staying.

“I was unemployed immediately.”

Hearn at the time was about to retire. By then, Mike Babcock had climbed on as coach.

After the Chiefs late-summer hockey school that year the Chiefs offered him a full-time position, which Schott accepted just as his legal career was taking off.

As a clerk for the Colville Tribal Court “I was writing opinions for the chief judge,” he said. “I’d be going to games and writing ‘til 2 or 3 in the morning, churning out opinions, doing my research, faxing stuff.”

He juggled trips to Nespelem where he was clerking with practices and games (“There never was a conflict,” he says. “I was always there.”)

He clerked through March of last year while taking court-appointed cases and “getting exposure.”

By then “It was time to go into practice for myself,” he said. “I shifted gears from a clerk to a tribal court practitioner, working out of my basement - the tomb.”

The job expanded. He branched out. Firms farmed out work that had to go through tribal court.

“I was like Ghost Busters,” Schott said with a laugh. “Who you gonna call? It’s not that these heavy-hitter firms were unable to do the work, it’s just that I knew the ropes.”

It took a while to figure out what he wanted. Six years after earning a second degree at Central Washington University he’d entered law school fairly late in life, in 1989.

Now he doesn’t need a second job that he has to divide into morning and evening shifts. Finally, at 40, no money is no longer a big issue.

“At least we’re not eating Top Ramen anymore,” he says.

Still, he holds on to the hockey job.

“I always say this is my last year,” Schott said this week as the Chiefs prepared for Friday night’s playoff opener in Kelowna. “But it’s in my blood. It’s a pleasure knowing these kids and working with this staff. We’re a team.

“I’ll take a few months off and Mike or Tim will call and ask if I’m ready for (Chiefs) hockey school? I’ll probably say what I always say.

“When and what time?”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color Photos

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: ON DECK Friday: WHL playoffs, Chiefs at Kelowna, 7 p.m.