Enthusiastic involvement
She’s the cover “girl” for the current issue of Northwest Woman magazine.
She’s an actress, a dancer, a body builder and an ardent angler.
She’s a wife, a mother, a grandmother and a teacher.
She’s the founder and leader of the musical comedy service troupe, the Red Hot Mamas.
She’s Claudia “Mikki” Stevens, 58, a lady whose energy, enthusiasm, love of God and penchant for getting involved have taken her and her coterie of Coeur d’Alene lady performers to two presidential inaugurals, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, London’s New Year’s parade, the Fiesta and Holiday bowls, appearances on MTV, ABC’s “Nightline,” and “Good Morning America,” and scores of charity events in North Idaho and around the Northwest.
And for the past seven years, she’s been passing on her hard-earned knowledge of the hospitality industry to students in North Idaho College’s culinary arts program.
Mikki Stevens is one of our own, born Claudia McDermid in Coeur d’Alene, a graduate of the now-departed Central School, then Coeur d’Alene High and NIC.
“I’m an actress by nature,” she confesses. “One of my earliest memories is of being the girl on Santa’s lap during a grade-school play. I also remember being made up as a little African girl for a Christmas pageant at the First Presbyterian Church when I was 6.”
Stevens credits the Coeur d’Alene Parks and Recreation Department’s dance and baton twirling programs for her start in the entertainment profession.
“I was enrolled from kindergarten on,” she explains. “Elisha Seacaur taught us jazz, tap, ballet and acrobatics. Later, when I was taking dancing lessons and looking for work in Hollywood, the early training I received here really paid dividends.
“And I and several of the Mamas still use our twirling skills, but instead of batons, we’re now flipping around mops,” she laughs.
She naturally gravitated to the theater in her high school and NIC years, acting in plays at both schools plus serving as drill team leader, cheerleader, band member and vice president of her junior college sophomore class.
A bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Pacific Lutheran University in 1970 – she worked in restaurants and pursued performance opportunities in Hollywood during summer vacations – provided Stevens with a solid technical background that enabled her to find lighting and sound technician jobs when she moved to Southern California after her graduation.
With her new husband, Dennis, a South Dakota native residing in Kent, Wash., she settled in the San Fernando Valley and, resuming a trade she’d begun at age 14, Stevens worked as a waitress in a series of restaurants in the valley and in Westwood.
“It was a great way to meet people in show business,” she said. “And it’s a lot steadier work than acting or the behind-the-scenes technical jobs. For years, I worked three jobs at once.”
Her showbiz credits include the voice of Pebbles, the teenaged “Flintstones” girl, parts in the “Columbo” and “McCoy” television series, lead dancer in the movie “Hot Tomorrow,” which she describes as a spoof of the motion picture “Flashdance,” and a part in the Unknown Comic movie.
“Los Angeles life put a real strain on our marriage,” Stevens said. “Dennis was willing to put up with my entertainment business aspirations, but he just couldn’t stand the big city. And our marriage is a lot more important to me than my career.”
So, in 1977 the Stevens family left the southland and moved to Sumner, Wash. For the next seven years, she taught dance and theater for the city of Kent’s recreation department and was the jazz dance and aerobics instructor for Highline Community College.
She also became a competitive natural body builder, winning several titles during those years.
In 1984, the family – now with daughter Dusty, born in 1978 – moved again, this time to Wasilla, Alaska, some 50 miles northeast of Anchorage, where Dennis worked in construction.
There, she taught theater and dance, managed a Gold’s Gym Family Fitness Center, formed a performance company and acted in local productions.
She recalls family fishing trips to the Deshka River that included sloshing through swamps, avoiding bear scat, and battling 50-pound king salmon to a finish.
A declining Alaska economy dictated their next move and, “Since we could go anyplace, we chose Coeur d’Alene,” she said. “We love it here, the four seasons and it is – or was – a small beautiful town. It’s now a not-so-small beautiful town.”
For a year, Stevens taught dance for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, then began as a waitress at the Cedars floating restaurant.
For the next 13 years, she worked every job in that establishment. She was the general manager when she left for the teaching post at NIC in 1999.
Her love of performance and God led her to form the Red Hot Mamas, she said.
“I love musical comedy,” she explains, “but I was too old for performing in those kind of plays. I just prayed to God for guidance on my next step.”
God inspired her, she said, to form the troupe, and 40 middle-age women answered the first ad she placed.
They started as a stage show group, then began doing parade performances in the Lake City’s July Fourth parade. The precision shopping-cart drill team debuted at one of those performances.
Today, there are about 100 Mamas and, in addition to their well-publicized parades, the ladies provide benefit performances for such organizations as Hospice, Habitat for Humanity, Cancer Relay for Life, senior citizens organizations, Children’s Village, Special Olympics, Komen Race for the Cure and the Idaho Peace Officers’ Memorial.
It’s obvious from her background that Stevens isn’t content to keep doing the same old things the same old way.
She’s going to experiment with adding vacuum cleaners to the Mamas’ repertoire, is planning to script a female version of “A Christmas Carol,” and is thinking about writing a musical comedy for Broadway and the silver screen.
“Think of it,” she said. “Performers like Bette Midler, Goldie Hawn Shirley MacLaine and Dolly Parton just don’t get the parts when their faces drop, yet they’re still huge talents.
“I think a show starring folks like that would be a real winner.”
Just like Mikki Stevens.