At Chase Center, a 68-year-old Berkeley woman with a glittery prosthetic leg and a cane has become one of the most recognizable faces in the Golden State Valkyries' sellout crowd, handing out thousands of playoff bracelets and hugging children. Cynthia Cheak lost her left leg two years ago after a knee replacement went catastrophically wrong, and she says the Valkyries gave her something she had not felt in years: purpose.
Cheak's ordeal began in 2020, when she underwent knee replacement surgery that led to an infection just one week later, according to ABC7 San Francisco. Nine surgeries and repeated rounds of antibiotics failed to heal the infection. Cheak ultimately lost her left leg, and after a fall early in 2025, she underwent an eleventh operation on the amputated leg. She now wears a prosthetic leg and walks with a cane. Periprosthetic joint infections like hers occur in just 0.5% to 2.4% of primary knee replacements but can climb to as high as 20% in revision surgeries, according to a peer-reviewed review published in PMC, and the condition remains a leading cause of revision procedures nationwide.
The toll was not only physical. Cheak said the loss of her leg plunged her into severe depression. “That's when the depression really got bad,” she said, per the same ABC7 account. Her experience tracks with broader patterns among amputees: roughly 36% of the 2.3 million Americans living with limb loss report experiencing depression, according to statistics from the Amputee Coalition and Avalere Health, with mobility loss and body-image changes cited as key drivers of the distress.
A Former Trainer Finds a New Role in the Crowd
Before her amputation, Cheak worked as a personal trainer, and she still trains dementia patients and does strength training three days a week under a trainer's supervision, the outlet's report notes. But it is the Valkyries' home crowd, known as Ballhalla, where she says she has found renewed meaning. Cheak now attends games to hand out Golden State playoff-themed bracelets, hug children, and pose for photos, telling fans, “Hi, guys, want your swag? You've got to have swag. You've got to wear it. If you don't wear it, we don't win.”
She has handed out roughly 20,000 bracelets overall, including more than 8,000 playoff bracelets across four games this postseason, and ordered more after Game 1 of the current series. Cheak began passing out playoff-themed bracelets two days after Golden State clinched its postseason berth by beating the Dallas Wings on August 17, having ordered the bracelets before the clinch even happened. “This year, I want to spread the love,” she said, according to the same report.
The Team Takes Notice
Cheak's visibility within the fan base has not gone unnoticed by the team itself. Head coach Natalie Nakase dedicated the Valkyries' playoff-clinching win to her, telling the team, “We're playing for Cynthia.” Guard Kaitlyn Chen, who won an NCAA championship with UConn in 2025 after transferring from Princeton, signed Cheak's glittery prosthetic leg, and Cheak says she plans to collect autographs from every Valkyries player to laminate onto her prosthetic socket. Fellow fan Lauren Wu has taken to calling her the “sparkle queen and bracelet fairy.”
“The Valkyries were really encouraging for me,” Cheak said. She has become an advocate for disabled people through her presence at games, telling reporters, “It's euphoric when I come here.”
A Franchise Built for This Moment
Cheak's rise as a fan fixture is unfolding alongside one of the fastest success stories in recent WNBA history. Golden State Warriors co-chairman Joe Lacob paid a record $50 million expansion fee in 2023 to launch the Valkyries as the league's 13th franchise and its first expansion team since 2008, according to The Valkyries Blog. The team trains at a renovated Oakland facility that once served as the Warriors' NBA practice home from 1997 to 2019, while playing all of its home games at Chase Center in San Francisco, per the WNBA.
That bet has paid off commercially. Front Office Sports reported the Valkyries generated $78 million in revenue during their inaugural year and reached a valuation near $1 billion, powered by sellout crowds across two seasons. Hoodline previously reported that a streak of 41 straight sold-out games helped land Chase Center the 2027 WNBA All-Star Game.
Nakase Chases a Finals Berth Against Her Former Team
On the court, Golden State is one win from its first WNBA Finals appearance. Guard Veronica Burton sank a go-ahead 3-pointer with 41 seconds remaining Wednesday to seal an 83-81 Game 2 semifinal win over the defending champion Las Vegas Aces at Chase Center, giving the Valkyries a 2-0 series lead, according to the Associated Press. Burton finished with just one field goal in the game, but it was the one that mattered.
The matchup carries extra weight for Nakase, who served as a Las Vegas assistant coach and helped the Aces win back-to-back championships in 2022 and 2023 before becoming Golden State's inaugural head coach in October 2024. She was named the 2025 WNBA Coach of the Year after leading the expansion Valkyries to 23 wins and a playoff berth in their first season. The team clinched its playoff spot with a win over Dallas.
For Cheak, the team's success and her own recovery have become intertwined narratives playing out in the same arena each night. Between bracelets, hugs, and autograph requests, she has found in Ballhalla a community that, by her own account, has helped pull her back from the depths of her depression and into the center of a crowd that treats her like family.
