At first glance, Sedona resident Gigi Rock seems to be the normal, everyday, girl-next-door type of woman, but after talking with her for an extended period of time, one finds out that isn’t exactly the case.
Giving her age as “irrelevant,” Rock gave a big smile and revealed she’s from no particular place in general, just that she was born and raised in the military.
“There isn’t one place that sticks. I was born and raised in the military life. My dad was in the military and I married a man that was in the military,” Rock said.
Rock moved to Sedona in 2009, but has been coming to the area for the last 14 years. Rock and her family moved to Scottsdale in 2005 from Connecticut, but decided on Sedona as a resting place because her husband likes the mountains.
“He didn’t like Scottsdale and I can do my business anywhere, so Sedona it is,” Rock said smiling.
Rock’s business, one of the more well-known sports entertainment companies in the world, keeps her on the move. Rock admitted she only lives in Sedona about six months out of the year, and the rest of the time is traveling.
Rock mainly deals with celebrity sporting events such as golf tournaments, private parties and other fun things. Anytime there is a celebrity golf tournament on ESPN where viewers see movie stars, sports heroes and others teeing it up for charity, there’s a good chance Rock may be involved.
“My goal is to bring in more celebrity sports events here to Sedona, so I don’t have to travel. I know that sounds weird — you know, people are like ‘you go to the Caribbean, Costa Rica, Hawaii,’ — yeah that’s great, but after a while you want to calm down,” Rock said.
Rock started her own business nearly 20 years ago before the age of websites, text messaging and other such easy, efficient ways to communicate. She started in Europe doing dinners for generals and presidents.
“I was literally a teenager when I lived over there and it all escalated after doing dinners for generals. After I got back to the states, I thought the best way to make money was to be on the sports celebrity side of things. I started working with different celebrities in golf and it took off from there,” Rock said.
Rock explained how her company works, saying a celebrity will call her up, someone that is usually attached to a charity, and they’ll ask her to create an event for them that involves golf, ski, poker, paint ball or whatever sport or activity one can think of. Rock develops the event to bring in dollars for the charity and the celebrity brings in other celebrities to participate in the event.
Rock has met several sports celebrities such as Kurt Warner, Wayne Gretzky and Baseball Hall of Fame members Mike Schmidt and Carlton Fisk and other stars like Justin Timberlake, Michael Douglas and Kevin Costner.
When asked if there was any one star that actually made her nervous, Rock answered Sugar Ray Leonard.
“I grew up loving boxing and Sugar Ray Leonard. He agreed to host one of our events and I was in awe. I literally stood in the back of the room and we had media all over the place and my team was like, ‘you have to get up there.’ I said, ‘no way, I can’t talk to him.’ I ended up going up and they introduced me and he reached out and hugged me and I was like, ‘I love you,’” Rock said laughing. “I’ve met some big time ‘A’ list celebrities but out of all of them, Sugar Ray put me over the edge. I was a bumbling idiot.”
Rock is one of the few females in the sports entertainment business but that doesn’t stop her. She said the best thing is when sports stars and other celebrities hear about her, and call her up to run an event because of how well another event went.
“Your name gets around fast if you do good work. I want those guys to call and want to work with me. Saying ‘yeah, Gigi Rock did a great job, give her a call for your event,’” Rock said with a big smile.
