For about 30 seconds on a recent weekday afternoon, Oakland’s “Girl Scout Barracuda” looked exhausted.

The city’s mayor-elect, Libby Schaaf — given the barracuda nickname by a colleague — had been at a City Council meeting until 2:30 a.m. She was in the midst of hiring a dozen staffers and a city administrator, and drawing up a transition plan for her first few months in office. She was also scheduled to volunteer at her children’s school and meet with residents and police about recent protests. And somewhere in there, she needed to pack for a week in Scranton, Pa., with her in-laws.

She looked haggard and cranky. But then the conversation turned to Tina Tamale, and Schaaf brightened like the neon marquee at the Grand Lake Theatre.

“People like her are Oakland’s secret sauce,” Schaaf said, referring to “Tina Tamale” Ramos, a third-generation Oakland tamale maker who just opened her first restaurant. “She’s innovative. She has public-private support. And she has a great Chino-Latino fusion menu. Peking duck quesadillas — how Oakland is that?”

Schaaf’s relentless enthusiasm for all things Oakland — from small-business owners like Ramos to its financial stability to the fate of its sports teams — has fueled Schaaf’s career since she entered Oakland’s public arena 20 years ago, and it helped her defeat incumbent Mayor Jean Quan by a landslide in November. She was a cheerleader at Skyline High in the early 1980s, and in some ways never stopped.

Will of a lineman

But for all her cheering of Oakland’s strengths, its quirkiness and its potential, she has the will of a defensive lineman, observers said.

“She’s not Attilla the Hun, but she’s just as tenacious,” said Greg McConnell, president of the Jobs and Housing Coalition, which represents Oakland developers. “When Libby makes up her mind to do something, it’s very difficult to change it. My advice to anyone trying to influence her is to get in there early.”

Schaaf, who has represented the Oakland hills on the City Council the past four years, is often associated with the city’s burgeoning business community. During the Occupy protests in 2011, she co-sponsored a resolution to prevent shutdowns of the Port of Oakland, which she described as an economic necessity for the city. The resolution failed, and Occupiers feasted upon her. At one meeting, a protester screamed across the chambers that she was “little miss honey-baked ham.”

Business leaders loved her for it, and were major donors to her mayoral campaign. But over the summer she backed a boost in the minimum wage, and they balked.

“I knew some people wouldn’t be happy, but it was the right thing to do,” she said.

Perhaps no Oakland mayor has had local roots like Schaaf. As a kid she performed as Raggedy Ann at Children’s Fairyland, and a drawing she did at age 7 still hangs backstage at the Paramount Theater, where she’s set to be inaugurated Jan. 5. She attended Oakland public schools, where she was, indeed, a Girl Scout, and volunteered as a junior ranger at Joaquin Miller Park.

After graduating from law school, she helped organize school volunteers for the Marcus Foster Institute, an educational nonprofit in Oakland, and eventually got into politics. For several years, she was an aide to City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente and then Mayor Jerry Brown, specializing in crime and police issues. She helped implement the city’s Measure Y violence-prevention program, which is credited with reducing crime rates in East and West Oakland.

Schaaf, 49, lives in the Upper Dimond neighborhood with her husband, Sal, and two children, ages 7 and 9. Having young kids has been perfect training for city government, she once told a reporter. One learns endless patience and expert negotiating skills, she said.

She also learned a few political tricks from Brown and De La Fuente, who taught her the art of bringing disparate groups together and of clearly defining one’s goals, Schaaf has said. She recently told a colleague that it’s better to focus on two or three goals than pick 100 you can’t hope to accomplish.

“That was straight out of Jerry Brown’s '10K’ playbook,” the colleague said, referring to Brown’s goal of bringing 10,000 new residents downtown — the initiative that spawned Oakland’s resurgence downtown and Uptown.

Schaaf’s management experience comes from a two-year stint as public affairs chief for the Port of Oakland. There, she brought in millions in public funding for the city, but also — more important, for a politician — learned how to handle the media and understand public opinion, observers said. Among reporters, Schaaf is known for texting at all hours, a meticulous insistence on accuracy and near-constant availability.

That devotion to public information bleeds into her drive for more transparency at Oakland City Hall. She’s been a longtime advocate for overhauling the city’s website so information is easier to find, ultimately streamlining Oakland’s notoriously muddy bureaucracy. Campaign contributions, permit information and budget data are all things that should be easily available online, she said. Code for America, a nonprofit group that assists government agencies with tech issues, is working on the project now, she said.

“I love democracy, but I think government can sometimes be more of an irritant than a facilitator,” she said. “We can use technology a lot better than we have been to connect people with City Hall.”

Crime is also a priority of Schaaf’s. While on the campaign trail, she often said, “Crime should not be a sort of tax you pay to live here. ... Oakland has all the ingredients to solve this problem, and we will.”

Schaaf points to cities like Los Angeles and New York, which have seen dramatic decreases in violent crime, and plans to bring their crime-fighting ideas to Oakland, she said. During the past few years, she’s brought in crime experts, as well as leaders from New York and Los Angeles, to talk to Oakland officials and the public about what works and what doesn’t.

Her plan for Oakland is to hire more police, but change the way they operate.

“Police matter, but it’s not just the numbers, it’s the quality of their work,” she said. “They need to be connected to the community. There needs to be trust. ... Oakland has its challenges, but New York and Los Angeles have both been very successful with this. We don’t have any excuses anymore.”

These days, it’s protests, not crime, that’s on the minds of most Oaklanders. The city has seen almost daily demonstrations in the aftermath of the Ferguson, Mo., grand jury report, and many of those protests have devolved after nightfall into vandalism, arson, looting and fighting after nightfall. Dozens have been arrested, numerous businesses have had their windows smashed, and several protesters, officers and journalists have been assaulted.

Police overtime has been costing the city about $100,000 a day, staff members said.

“We need to draw a clear line between free speech and vandalism, between protesting and doing irreparable harm to Oakland’s economy,” Schaaf said. Putting more police on bicycles, so they can keep up with protesters, is one immediate solution, she said.

Occupy lessons

Schaff said she’s learned from the Occupy protests of 2011, the violent and ongoing nature of which some say was the downfall of Quan. The main lessons are that provoking protesters isn’t a good idea, and the city needs to be tougher on vandals, looters and others destroying property.

But some in Oakland say Schaaf’s biggest challenge will be balancing the development boom with the needs of longtime residents, so lower-income people are not forced out and the city retains some of the affordability and quirky, unpretentious and scrappy character that residents say they love.

Community activist Naomi Schiff, who works with housing and historic preservation groups, said Schaaf needs to break away from the entrenched interests of the political establishment.

“She’s a longtime city insider with a lot of experience, but it’s independence we’re going to need,” Schiff said. “I’m looking to Libby to keep the city economically, socially and racially diverse. Oakland needs to keep every kind of diversity.”

Housing for middle- and low-income families should be a priority, she said, along with saving Oakland’s historic buildings.

So far, Schaaf has been outstanding on that front, said Esperanza Tervalon-Daumont, director of Oakland Rising, a nonprofit group that promotes the political interests of flatlands residents. Since she’s been involved with Oakland government, Schaaf has been a strong advocate for policies that benefit low-income residents, immigrants and people of color, Tervalon-Daumont said.

“She is open to hearing new ideas and different opinions, understands the inside and outside of how government works, and is clear and effective at making things happen,” she said.

You’ll find no argument from Tina Tamale. Ramos, who learned the tamale craft from her mother and grandmother, credits Schaaf with helping her open La Snackeria, a lunch spot in Old Oakland, in late November. The two had met years ago when Schaaf was working in the Fruitvale area with De La Fuente.

“Libby called me one day, not as a candidate but just as a regular person, and suggested I get a Kiva (no-interest, small-business) loan,” Ramos said. “The city is a trustee, but Libby signed on personally as a trustee, too. I was really impressed with that. She’s an Oaklander, and she gets it. She’s just very real, very authentic, and she’s great at getting things done.”

Ramos’ hope for the Schaaf era is that she maintains her focus on average Oaklanders.

“She’s great at listening, and she’s very smart,” Ramos said. “I just hope she and her staff can keep an eye on the little guy.”

Carolyn Jones is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: carolynjones@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @carolynajones