49ers' new hero has down-to-earth reputation in Bay Area hometown

When Brock Purdy floated a ball into the back right corner of the Lumen Field end zone and it somehow found Jake Tonges’ hands, it wasn’t just the San Francisco 49ers sideline that exploded.

So, too, did the phone of just about every person who cares about football in Los Gatos. And it takes only one day in the town nestled into the Santa Cruz Mountains to realize just how many people that includes.

“My phone has been blowing up since Sunday, and it’s been great — former players, parents, coaches and everything,” Mark Krail, the head football coach at Los Gatos High School who coached Tonges back in the 2010s, told SFGATE.

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The same was true for Dave Spitz, who runs the private gym California Strength just a few blocks down Main Street from the high school. Spitz is from Danville and started his business in San Ramon, and Tonges trained at California Strength to get ready for the NFL Draft after deciding to walk on at Cal and earning his way into a full-ride scholarship and a starting spot. When Spitz was expanding his business and came to Los Gatos in 2020, he credits Tonges with helping build a bridge for the workout company from the East Bay to the South Bay.

“Jake has this installed base of super fans from this community, from the East Bay community,” Spitz told SFGATE. “The amount of love that he got was off the charts.”

Depending on which way you’re going, Los Gatos either marks the final Bay Area stop before the winding route down Highway 17 to Santa Cruz or serves as a Bay Area welcome mat on the path through the mountains and back to civilization. It’s easy for many in the region to breeze past the mountain alcove, which has just shy of 33,000 residents.

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But there’s no mistaking the town’s affluence and its impact. As of 2023, the town’s median household income was over $207,000 and the median property value was $2 million, with new home sales consistently ranking the town as among the most expensive in the region and the country. Upscale cocktail bars and fancy restaurants adorn Main Street and West Santa Cruz Avenue, the two main roads of downtown Los Gatos, and there’s a steady hum of traffic along downtown streets as folks from around the South Bay and Peninsula find their brunch or dinner spots.

“Los Gatos, it’s always been known as a quaint little town,” Darin Devincenzi, who co-owns Double D’s Sports Grille with his brother Dean, told SFGATE. (And yes, the name’s double entendre did cause quite a stink in town when it opened in 1996.) “It’s got money. There’s nice little shops and restaurants. It’s been a destination town for a long time.”

“It’s a little bit hard to kind of afford and stay here and pay to be here,” Sara Williams, the owner of popular breakfast spot Southern Kitchen, told SFGATE. “But it’s a tight community of people that know each other, just through small business, through schools and through sports.”

For longtime residents, though, the places they hold near and dear are the mom-and-pop shops and places that have been community stalwarts. The Tonges family absolutely fits that bill, as they moved to Los Gatos when Jake was 5 years old and haven’t left since.

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In an interview with KNBR-AM/FM’s “Murph and Markus” morning show on Tuesday, Tonges shouted out some of his favorites, all longtime staples of the community: the aforementioned Southern Kitchen, which has been open for more than 50 years; Los Gatos Cafe, open since 1987; the Pastaria, which opened in 1995; and Los Gatos Meats, which goes all the way back to 1891. Los Gatos Meats owner Brian Chiala told SFGATE he saw Jake’s dad last week for a lunch order and sees Jake himself plenty, too.

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“You get a guy like Jake, who’s been eating Los Gatos Meats since he was probably 8 years old, and his parents come here and eat here,” Chiala said. “It becomes a generational thing.”

But beyond the town’s small-town charm, sports have been a major passion for Los Gatans going back decades. It first took hold under legendary coach Charlie Wedemeyer, who was diagnosed with ALS at the age of 32 but continued to coach at the school for decades until he died in 2010 at the age of 64.

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Starting with Wedemeyer and continued by Butch Cattolico, the Wildcats became a force in the Central Coast Section. Los Gatos has notched 16 section titles — the second most in the section’s history and easily the most among any public school in the CCS. They’ve regularly knocked off top-tier schools in the vaunted West Catholic Athletic League, something that’s clearly a point of pride for the Wildcat faithful.

“We always say, ‘If we can keep our kids, we’re going to be fine,’” Krail said. “A lot of schools lose kids, a lot of kids, to the private schools, and yet, we’re kind of able to maintain [ours].”

As the program’s status grew, so did the town’s fervor over football — and as several people told SFGATE, the town of Los Gatos has pretty much been painted orange and black for the ’Cats. Helmets, shirts, photos and other paraphernalia are all visible inside Los Gatos Meats and at the Italian American Deli, both of which offer support to the program, and plenty of other shops too. The Devincenzis estimated 100 parents of Los Gatos players came to the restaurant around 4 p.m. before games last fall and then all returned after the games ended, too.

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“We still have kind of a ‘Friday Night Lights’ feel to our games,” said Krail, who has coached at Los Gatos for 13 years. “We have generations of parents that still come to our games, middle schoolers who are at the games dreaming about putting on our uniforms.”

Krail proudly recalls how Tonges’ class won the 2016 De Anza League title together, one of many the school has notched. The recent standout moment, though, was the 2023 run to a state championship game. The team got a police escort on its way out of town — and the community showed up to send the team off.

“We all stood out on the street and waved to the big buses,” said Williams. She said the community’s love for Los Gatos football is “huge.”

And it’s a community with bonds that last forever. Only three elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school are in town, so kids grow up together and stick together. Chiala played at Los Gatos with the same group of kids he started Pop Warner with and is still friends with them to this day. In his KNBR interview, Tonges said he still has that connection with his friends, and he cited it as the reason why he never considered going to a private school. It’s something Krail says has helped the team on the field.

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“I often hear the private schools preaching, ‘Brotherhood’ and this kind of stuff, and I don’t disrespect that at all, but my guys are the brotherhood,” Krail said. “These are the guys that have known each other since the second grade. That bond is real.”

The sports love goes beyond football, too. Los Gatos became a global phenomenon in 1994, when the Brazilian men’s soccer team made the town its home base during its World Cup-winning run. And as the San Jose Sharks and 49ers have moved into the South Bay, star players have found homes in the area and become neighbors in the community.

The most beloved sports star in town — yes, even more than Tonges — remains Sharks legend Joe Thornton. Both of the Devincenzi brothers say they’ve become friendly with Jumbo over the years as he’s frequented Double D’s, and Chiala said Thornton swings through LG Meats often, too. Beyond Thornton, Patrick Marleau, George Kittle and Kyle Shanahan, along with other 49ers coaches, are also frequent faces in town. (Casey Schmitt has also become a favorite at Double D’s, though that may be more due to the fact that he’s dating Dean’s daughter.)

But still, there’s an added pride in one of their own becoming a star. Plenty of Los Gatos alums have gone on to play football in college and even the NFL — most notably Hall of Fame defensive end Jared Allen (who played there for one year), quarterback Trent Edwards and linebacker Kiko Alonso. The latter remains a prominent figure in town, and Spitz has a massive banner of him hanging on the outside of the California Strength facility (along with two other locally famous stars who train there: Zach and Julie Ertz).

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And yet, save for a very brief stint at the end of Alonso’s long career that didn’t include any games on the field, none of the Wildcats who went to the NFL have starred for the hometown 49ers. With George Kittle out for at least four weeks, Tonges will get a chance to do exactly that. And for Spitz, it may be time for a new face on the banner in front.

“We need to put up Jake,” Spitz said.

Turns out, everyone in Los Gatos is fully on board with celebrating Tonges not just because of what he’s done but because of who he is.

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“You couldn’t get a better dude than Jake Tonges as a representative for this town,” Spitz said. “He bleeds this place. He loves this place. It couldn’t happen to a better human.”

“That one was particularly satisfying because, like a lot of our kids that have been successful, Jake is just such a wonderful human,” said Heath Clark, the defensive coordinator for Los Gatos football who taught all four Tonges children at Los Gatos (Jake took Clark’s freshman English class). “… There’s real pride that the kid that’s being successful is also a great exemplar of everything we’re trying to do as a program, which is to create better men and better humans.

“And it’s a bonus when they’re f—king sick at playing football.”

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