Minerva Perez's 'Caddyshack' Connection: Remember The Baby Ruth? That Was Hers

Minerva Perez has done a great deal in her life.As executive director of the Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island, Ms. Perez has spent the last two years advocating for the Latino community’s voice to be heard on the East End. She’s pushed for having translators at school board meetings so Latino parents can understand what issues concern their children, helped locals register to vote in the 2016 election, and helped organize a celebration of cultural diversity.

Also on her list of accomplishments: clearing out an entire Florida swimming pool in 1979 with the perfectly timed deployment of a Baby Ruth candy bar.

Or at least that’s what her character, Joey D’Annunzio, did in the 1980 comedy classic “Caddyshack.”

Ms. Perez was one of many young kids filling in the background in the story of one wacky summer for a motley crew of caddies and golfers at a snooty golf club. So how did Ms. Perez, who was 12 years old at the time of filming, earn lines in the midst of the antics of Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and Rodney Dangerfield?

Ms. Perez, who now lives in Sag Harbor, said on Friday that her grandfather, Hank Scelza, was a driver on the set of the movie as it filmed at the Rolling Hills Golf Club, now known as Grande Oaks Golf Club, in Davie, Florida. Though the movie’s setting was modeled on the Indian Hill Club in Winnetka, Illinois, the movie was shot in the fall of 1979, and Illinois weather at the time was not ideal for a summertime comedy. In fact, Ms. Perez pointed out that the production had to shoot deep within Rolling Hills to avoid getting any Florida palm trees in the shots.

“My grandfather learned that the role of Joey hadn’t been cast yet,” Ms. Perez said. “So he said to Harold Ramis [co-writer and director of the movie], ‘My granddaughter is a tomboy and she could do the role.’”

Though the part of Joey was originally written for a boy, Ms. Perez auditioned in front of Mr. Ramis and producer/co-writer Douglas Kenney, and got the part. She had never been given speaking lines in a movie before—but she was no novice. On top of her doing some school productions while growing up in Miami, Ms. Perez said, she had gone with her grandfather to visit the sets of other movies shot in Florida, including the 1979 action-comedy “Hot Stuff” with Dom DeLuise and the 1977 Robert Shaw thriller “Black Sunday.”

“When I was a kid, Jodie Foster and Tatum O’Neal were my idols, because they were young, strong, tough girls,” Ms. Perez said.

In between shooting scenes and traveling around the set with her grandfather, Ms. Perez said, she found her own ways to make the time fly by. She spent time driving around the set in a golf cart with Mr. Ramis’s daughter, Violet, and Brian Doyle-Murray, co-writer and brother of Bill.

Speaking of Bill Murray, Ms. Perez recalled a day when she and other young cast members exchanged funny notes with him slid under the door of a room where Mr. Murray was staying during the shooting.

“I loved the vibe on set, sort of like a safe party,” Ms. Perez said. “I felt like I was around this extended family—I felt like I was home.”