Remembering restaurateur Holly Summers after her sudden death.

Way back when Holly Summers was a server and manager at quintessential local breakfast/comfort food spots like The Cottage, Em Le's, The Wagon Wheel and Rosine's, she saved all her tips so one day she might fulfill her own dream.

After at least a decade of saving, she did just that, buying Lighthouse Cafe in Pacific Grove in 2005 and soon renaming it Holly's Lighthouse Cafe.

She was banking something just as important as cash along the way, according to her daughter Amy Hanmer, who now runs Holly's, which is open 7am-2pm every day except Tuesday at 602 Lighthouse Ave. in Pacific Grove. 

"She learned something from everyone and every place she worked with," Hanmer says. "She tried to represent the best thing of everything she learned."

She also enjoyed a gift that can't be taught: a love for hospitality, for people, for food.

"It's the way she would smile at you and talk with you when you were at the restaurant," her daughter says. "She wanted you to feel like you were home.

"She was family to everyone she met."

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New Year's Eve night felt celebratory for Summers and her boyfriend Steven McDonald, who spent it at Sardine Factory.

Then a piercing headache prompted calls for an ambulance.

Ultimately, Summers was taken to CHOMP and airlifted to Stanford, knocked unconscious by what was diagnosed as a aneurysm in her brain. She died several days later at the age of 55.

Mo Ammar and the P.G. Chamber of Commerce spearheaded a community-wide effort to honor Summers last week at Chatauqua Hall. 

Today a dry erase board in the front window at Holly's reads, "To the whole community: Our family and friends want to thank you all for the incredible outpouring of love for Holly."

Inside, a steady stream of customers take seats at the small counter beneath big chalkboards with daily specials—Reese's Pieces waffles and pepper-and-cheese-stuffed burgers among them—or at tables with checkered tablecloths.

Nostalgic country plays. Fresh flowers—roses, Peruvian lilies, daisies—occupy humble vases next to bottles of Pepper Plant.

The big menu oozes Americana accessibility—chorizo scrambles, biscuits and gravy, and pancakes of both the carrot cake and bacon variety. Come lunch there are cucumber sandwiches and quarter-pound kosher hot dogs and hand-pressed half pound hamburgers.

The menu meshes seamlessly with the place itself and its easy energy.

One of the greatest achievements a restaurateur can achieve, if not the greatest, is to transcend food to be something more, a special place that's about cohesion and experience and heart.

Summers has accomplished that here. 

She mystified many with her ability to recall names, not just of customers but her customers' kids. 

"I'm not sure how she did it sometimes, remembering random things about people," Hanmer says. "She didn't just serve. It wasn't a job. It was home." 

Cottage owner-operator Kathleen Cardinalli worked with Summers while she was saving up for her own place.

"She was a magnet. People loved her. She laughed loud, talked a lot and loved baking," Cardinalli says. "She baked the most wonderful pies."

But for all the feel-good, big-hearted, soul-of-service aspects of her character, she also epitomized the gritty, grind-it-out, no-buts-about-it flipside to the restaurant business.

"I don't want to give the impression she was all sunshine and flowers," her daughter says. "She was a fierce, self-taught businesswoman. A firecracker. A loyal friend. She'd stand up for people and what she believed in.

"To have that balance, to be intimidating and admirable and loving, was something. She was both of those people."

Hanmer says it seems the close-knit team at Holly's is holding the food to higher standard now that her mother is gone. 

And her presence resonates beyond the food. Even the flowers evoke her love for gardening: "She took care of her flowers like they were little kids," Hanmer says.

That's the thing. She may be gone, but she remains in myriad ways. 

"She's everywhere," Hanmer says. "Every decoration, the 'I Love Lucy' posters, every single menu item. She's literally in everything we do."

One kind and smiling server put it even more succinctly.

"We miss her," she said. "But she lives on."