Documentary features Pacifica High superfan ‘Peter Pacifica’

Often ignored and briefly banned, the man nicknamed “Peter Pacifica” loved his alma mater even though it didn’t always love him back.

For nearly 50 years, the one-time high school outcast showed up at every football game at Pacifica High in Garden Grove as the unofficial mascot of a team that gave him a sense of belonging.

He left California a few years ago because of severe financial hardship, but a documentary posted Thursday night on YouTube could help provide some stability to the man, whose real name is Gary Freeman.

A fundraiser associated with the movie had raised nearly $8,500 in two days for Freeman and his brothers, who have been living out of a van.

The 33-minute documentary, shot primarily in 2011-12 by filmmaker Andrew Gosche, details Freeman’s struggles to support his beloved Mariners while living out of a Motel 6 after being evicted from his home.

It’s an emotionally wrought and crisply edited film that hits a dramatic peak when Freeman is forbidden from attending athletic events at Pacifica because a parent of a student learned his older brother was a convicted sexual offender.

“I don’t think Pacifica is my favorite place anymore,” Freeman says in the film. “It used to be. I forgot what it looked like anymore.”

There is a triumph when Freeman attends his 500th consecutive football game during the season opener in 2012, but even that moment is bittersweet; Freeman has to find his own way to the game after a parent of a student failed to pick him up as promised.

Freeman showed up late but he made it, like he always did before his money troubles forced him to move to Indiana so he could be near his other passion, Notre Dame.

Gosche learned of Freeman from girlfriend April Fiske, one of the film’s producers and a graduate of Pacifica who knew of Freeman’s effect on the school despite her never having played any sports or attended games there.

Freeman, a 1969 graduate of the school who was profiled by The Times in 2000, received the nickname Peter Pacifica from members of the drill team early in his tenure as the Mariners’ biggest supporter.