Kathy Zuckerman is the real-life inspiration for Gidget, the story of a teenager girl and her experiences in the male-dominated surf scene.

Zuckerman’s father, Frederick Kohner, was so fascinated by surfer culture at Malibu Beach in the late 1950s that he interviewed his daughter and based his novel on her adventures, which led to the influential bestseller, GIDGET.

The story was turned into a TV series, and the book has been re-released with a foreward by Zuckerman.