A Festival favorite rolls back into town

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Festival.

For longtime islanders, that one word says it all. We either love it or hate it. It’s a big part of our identity. And we have questions. Why is Vashon either under a heat advisory or a storm warning every Strawberry Festival? Why aren’t there any strawberries?

Who is going to be honorary mayor?

And then there is one of Festival’s great mysteries: Just who came up with the famous Thriftway Shopping Cart Drill Team?

Last year, islanders were heartbroken when the crowd favorite Drill Team never made an appearance in the parade. Parade-watchers craned their necks, hoping against hope, watching for the distinctive, zany, ridiculously serious and regimented shopping cart-wielders.

But to no avail. The Drill Team, it seems, took a year off.

So this year, islanders have been asking the important question: Are they back? The answer is yes.

But to understand how the Drill Team became such a Festival fixture, it helps to go back to the beginning.

One night 36 years ago, three employees of Vashon Thriftway watched a parade. A group of people were drilling and holding briefcases while they marched. The team acted very serious.

The employees — Dan Bruce, Carin Bruce and Nate Scholz — thought it was hilarious. Then they started talking about how the grocery carts at Thriftway spin when you put them away at night, almost flipping around so you can catch them perfectly.

And from there, a very Vashon idea was born.

The first Drill Team met in the parking lot at Thriftway at 9:30 p.m. after the store was closed. They would practice until midnight. Drill Team founder Dan Bruce said once they made so much noise practicing that the cops had to come and ask them to keep it down.

“We came up with anything that would make us laugh,” Carin Bruce said. The late Thriftway owner Norm Mathews gave the idea his blessing, she said.

“He gave us a thumbs-up and supported it. He let us make flags and have uniforms.”

Dan Bruce said people would try their hardest to make the marchers laugh, but they wore sunglasses and kept straight faces the whole time.

He said sometimes other marchers got mad at the Drill Team for pausing to do their routines and slowing down the parade, even yelling at them for the delayed pacing.

“We got the trophy three or four years in a row at the parade,” Dan Bruce said. “They finally stopped handing them out.”

But, batons are meant to be passed. So when Dan Bruce decided to give up the lead role, he didn’t have to look far. Thriftway employee Kevin Ross was “just a regular marcher” for the first five years and then became the guy in charge. And he has stuck — for 33 years.

Ross is a beloved figure on the island, working at Thriftway all these years as a delivery driver, volunteering with track and cross country at the high school, driving a school bus when he is needed. But one of his most famous roles is as the head of the Drill Team.

On the other hand, Ross said people routinely call Thriftway every year as summer approaches, asking if the Drill Team will be in the parade, so they can decide whether to attend.

Last year was the first year that they didn’t have the team. Ross said there just wasn’t enough time or people to do it. So, he sadly reports, it was the only year the team had to take a break “except for COVID, of course.”

But they are back. The team has had up to 15 marchers in good years. This year, the team is a small team of five, which Ross hopes to grow again.

He said the team will have eight to ten practices before the parade. They still get together after closing and work in the empty parking lot like they did in the beginning.

“People have to be committed,” Ross said. “They have to be willing to jump in. But people love it. They love the oddness of it all. We throw in comedy, too. We do union-mandated breaks. We do inspections and chants. We have a 7th Inning Stretch song called ‘Take Me Out To Go Shopping’ when we approach the end. We have fun. And the crowd has loved it from the first day.”

As for Dan and Carin Bruce, who now live in Idaho and have ten grandchildren, they love coming back to watch the parade.

“We handed the baton off and it is still going,” Carin Bruce said.

“One of the things that sticks with me all these years later is how sweet and kind Norm Mathews was,” Dan Bruce said. “He was really good to us. When we started doing this, he gave us the day off and a bonus for being on the team.”

“He was a great guy to work for,” Carin Bruce said. “The Drill Team gave us store spirit. It made it fun to work there.”

So islanders — the Drill Team is back. And what better way to thank them than for showering them with applause as they pass by you on the parade route? It takes a lot of work. And at least one of the people in the parade will be doing it for his 33rd time.

Lauri Hennessey is a former Beachcomber columnist, faculty member at the University of Washington and President of the National Women’s Political Caucus-Washington.