Don't Let the Lipstick Fool You

by Lisa Leslie

  That is exactly what we did. We managed to put the bombing behind us for a few hours and knocked off Australia to remain unbeaten. Two days later, we defeated South Korea. Then, in the quarterfinals, I set the U.S. single-game Olympic scoring record with thirty-five points in our victory over Japan. Team USA was kicking butt. I was feeling very confident on the court. The Olympics, however, were taking a backseat to the tragedy of the bombing and the hunt for the person who did it.

  Safety was now everybody’s ultimate priority. USA Basketball officials set down rules in an attempt to protect America’s athletes, especially the Dream Team. The restrictions were for our own good, but they really put a damper on everyone’s Olympic experience away from the basketball arena. It was my first Olympics and the first for every player on our team, except Teresa and Katrina. These games were on our home soil, but now none of us could go anywhere in Atlanta. We had no idea how to handle the situation. No one had been arrested, and nobody knew if a bomber was still out there planning to blow up the hotel, the venues, or something else in Atlanta.

  We were all jittery. It was hard to believe that somebody would come to the Olympics and do something like that. There had not been an attack at the Olympics since Munich in 1972, when the Israeli athletes were kidnapped and killed. We had never experienced anything like this. When we had gotten to Atlanta, we had felt really safe. We had not had one thought in our heads that there might be a bombing or someone out there plotting to kill us. Things like that just were not supposed to happen at the Olympic Games.

  Security got so much tighter after the bombing. We had to have our bags, our shoes, and all of our belongings screened by security personnel. Everybody had to have the proper ID. We could not have guests at the team hotel unless they were cleared by security. Things had really changed! Getting around was more difficult than ever, and those people who had lots of family and friends in Atlanta really had it tough.

  Now, when our team went to practice or to games, we had to take the hotel elevator all the way to the basement. There was no more parading through the lobby and going outside. Security guards with bomb-sniffing dogs would inspect our bus. While we waited, they checked inside, outside, under the seats, in the luggage compartments, and everywhere. Mirrors were used to make sure there were no explosives underneath the bus or on the chassis. When security decided that the bus was clean, we were finally allowed to get on board. It was scary, and every one of us was on high alert.

  So much had changed in Atlanta since the opening ceremony just eight days before. Back then the Olympics were all about international competition, the world’s top athletes battling to see who was the best. Now, all anybody could talk about was the bombing.

  The Olympic Games continued, but amid an air of uncertainty. In our semifinals rematch against Australia, we fell behind early and had to claw our way back into the game to win. That victory put our team on a collision course with Brazil—our biggest rival—in a showdown game that would decide the gold medal.

  Both Team USA and Brazil were undefeated when we tipped off in the Georgia Dome for the gold medal match. Thirty-three thousand fans packed that place. The stands were filled with acres of red, white, and blue. I was psyched, focused, and prepared for battle. Our team was ready to complete our mission. There was no way we were going to let Brazil take home the gold from our Olympics. We jumped on our opponents early and ran away to a 111–87 victory. I scored twenty-nine points. Sheryl, Katrina, and Ruthie all scored in double digits, and Team USA staked a claim to the gold medal in women’s basketball. It was finally over! We did it! We went undefeated, and our squad set another U.S. single-game Olympic record by shooting better than 66 percent in our impressive win over the Brazilians.

  Our long road had come to a successful end. All the hard work had paid off. We had come to Atlanta and had done what we had set out to do. Team USA had conquered the competition. What a great feeling! The bombing was behind us, at least for those few moments, and we were more than ready to get some new gold jewelry around our necks. I had won gold medals before and had been through ceremonies, but never at the Olympics. And I was certain of one thing: I was not going to cry, like so many athletes do on the medal stand.

  When our team was not playing, I watched a lot of other Olympic events and ceremonies on television. Everybody was crying! It was ridiculous! I saw this big, burly wrestler. He was so strong and tough in winning his match, but when the guy got the gold medal, he just started bawling. I thought to myself, Whatever! That looks so phony and rehearsed.

  A swimmer won gold, and he started blubbering. Our U.S. women’s gymnastics team went to the podium with their hero, Kerri Strug. They all got gold medals, and every one of them started crying. I was like, “Oh come on! Give me a break. These people are just really overdoing it.”

  When it was time for our basketball team to get gold medals, the entire squad went up on the podium. We had barely gotten settled when it happened to me. I started boohooing. I was crying and looking in the stands for Mom. When I saw her face, she was crying. That made me weep even more. So many feelings were going through me all at the same time. There was exhilaration, but there was also fatigue. After a full year of working toward our goal, all of a sudden we were there. We had done it, and the quest was over. But the ending was so abrupt. My teammates and I shared such a strong bond, and knowing that we would now go our separate ways was hard to digest. We all knew that we had restored the Team USA name, which had been marred after the team struggled in international competition. But it was hard to think about moving on without my trusty teammates. I just tried to enjoy the moment.

  The emotion of winning an Olympic gold medal was beyond words. It was the ultimate reward for a year of hard work, travel, dedication, and sacrifice. Having the gold medal placed around my neck was exhilarating, and smiles and hugs flowed as easily as the tears. Then the American flag started to rise.

  I was filled with incredible patriotism. My team and I had done something special on our home soil, and everyone took notice. We had proved that talent plus hard work and a solid strategy could bring success. Is that not the American way?

  All the Americans in the Georgia Dome stood up to sing our national anthem. I beamed with pride and elation, and as I stood shoulder to shoulder with my teammates, worn out physically and mentally and with the gold medal around our necks, I suddenly realized, Okay, I get it now. This is why people cry.

  Chapter 9

  Model Citizen

  I received a huge surprise when I got back to Los Angeles after the 1996 Olympics. I was fixing up my condo and I needed household items, so Mom, Tiffany, and I drove to a department store. I picked out some towels, and the bill came to about four hundred dollars. When the cashier ran my credit card, I could tell right away that something was not right. She got on the phone, and I got a very uncomfortable feeling. After several minutes, the woman told me that my credit card had been rejected. That made no sense to me, because I always paid my bill. I figured I would straighten things out with American Express when I got home, but to move things along at the store, I decided to write a check to pay for the merchandise.

  The cashier ran my check, and it was no good, either. Now I was getting embarrassed and upset. I knew I had plenty of money in my checking account, but she told me that my file showed several outstanding debts. My check was about as worthless as my credit card. I had no idea what was going on, but I was going to find out. Mom paid for the towels, and we headed home.

  I called American Express, and I was told that my account had been frozen because I had not made payments on the seven-hundred-dollar bill that was on my corporate AmEx card. What? I had never owned a corporate card!

  The people at Bank of America told me that there were a bunch of delinquent checks on my personal account, but the account number that they were looking into did not sound familiar. Wait. I only had one account at the bank, and that number was not mine. Had someone opened another checking account in my name? T
he bank official told me that anyone opening an account had to have a valid ID or driver’s license. He suggested that I might get some answers at the Division of Motor Vehicles, so that is where we went next.

  There is a small office at the DMV that is tucked away behind the cubicles, the photo spot, and the written test area. That was where I met with one of the DMV’s detectives. I explained my situation to him, and he pulled out my entire file. He showed me the first driver’s license that I had ever had, and I got to see my second license as well. I had had to get that one to replace the one that I had lost during my sophomore year in college. Next, the detective showed me my third driver’s license. It had my name and information on it, but the picture was not mine. The face belonged to my sister Dionne.

  I was shocked. Mom was stunned. Tiffany just held my hand. We had just seen Dionne’s fake ID, in my name, and she was smiling in the photo as if she had done nothing wrong. Mom and I could feel our hearts breaking. This was too much. It was too devious, even for Dionne.

  When the detective saw our reaction, he figured that we knew the culprit. He asked, “Do you want to press charges?” I thought about it for a while. What was I supposed to tell him? What could I do? Should I send my own sister to jail? What was Mom supposed to do? Send her own daughter to prison? All I could think about was my sister’s four children. What would they do without their mom? Her kids needed her, especially my little niece who was only two years old at the time. I had a very tough decision to make. It was not the kind of choice that I could make in a hurry, especially not at that moment. There were too many emotions in play, and too much was at stake. I took the detective’s phone number and said, “I will get back to you.”

  When we got home from the DMV, I called Dionne and said, “Just tell me why. I would have given you a hundred thousand dollars if you had just been patient. I would have put you guys in a house.”

  Her answer was, “You get everything. I don’t get anything. Everybody loves you. Everybody loves Lisa, but I am the black sheep of the family.”

  I could not believe my ears. My sister was pretty and smart. She was smarter than me. At least that was what I thought until this identity incident. She had her kids and a family, and she was doing fine. It was not like Dionne was struggling and I had abandoned her. Everything I had, she had. If I got a new car, she got my old car. I bought her clothes, and we shared my clothes. It was not like my sister was some forgotten outcast. Wherever I moved, she moved. When I moved up, she moved up, too. When I was at USC, Dionne would visit me in the dorm. We hung out. I never disconnected from her in any way. I never tried to make her feel like I was better than her, but then I never expected her to turn on me and steal my money and my identity, either.

  My credit was trashed, and my sister was at the root of the problem. She had taken my Social Security number and had used it to get the driver’s license in my name. Then she had stolen my identity and had started writing checks all over the Los Angeles area. She had bought a BMW using my name, and then she had missed payments. She had even put her utilities in my name and then had not paid her bills. She had run up outstanding bills at grocery stores and with merchants all over Los Angeles. She had even tried to start her own business using a corporate American Express Card that she had secured in the name of Lisa Leslie. That was where the troublesome corporate card had come from.

  I was crushed. My credit was an absolute mess, and it had all happened because I had given my sister a chance. This was the same sister who had tortured and terrorized me as a kid. And this was the same sister who had used a knife to break into my piggy bank when I was in grade school. Of the $150 that I had earned by watering neighbors’ lawns, Dionne had left me with just three dollars and a couple of “I-owe-you” notes. Still, I could not believe that my sister would steal from me like this.

  It was after the piggy-bank incident, in fact, that I started to close myself off to people and became very difficult to get to know. Suddenly, trusting people was extremely hard for me, especially trusting girls. That incident affected my life then, and it still does today. I love people, and I enjoy hanging out. When I am on the court, I am 100 percent there for my teammates, but off the court, I always resist getting too close. That reluctance was born when my own sister broke into my piggy bank. It remains one of the most heartbreaking experiences of my childhood.

  Years later I forgave Dionne for all of those childhood dramas and traumas, and I began to trust her once again. Dionne and I were adults now and had gotten close; I loved her unconditionally. I would call her to see how she was doing and would invite her over to my apartment at the college so we could cook dinner together. Things were so good between us that when I finished college and went to play basketball in Italy, I left my checkbook with Dionne. While I was away, she was supposed to pay any of my bills that came up and make sure that my mom had money if she needed it. I told her, “I will just sign some checks so you can take care of things.”

  She said, “Yeah, okay. No problem, Lisa. You know you can trust me. I would never do anything to hurt you.”

  Well, in the time that it took me to play in Italy in 1994, travel with Team USA in 1995, and play in the Olympics in 1996, Dionne had invaded my life and destroyed my credit. I had left her with some very small responsibilities to see how she would handle matters. I thought if Dionne could do this simple job, then maybe as I made bigger money, we could do more together. My heart was in the right place, and her tasks took very little effort, but she managed to turn the opportunity into a crime.

  I do not think like a criminal, so I never once questioned Dionne about her personal business or her money. I thought it was great when I found out that she had purchased a used BMW. She needed a good, safe car. I had no problem with that, but I had a real problem when I found out that she had used my name and my money to buy the car. What hurt the most, though, was that my own sister had betrayed me. I could almost accept somebody else stealing my identity, but knowing my own sister had stabbed me in the back hurt.

  I was angry with myself, too. In the words of my mother, trusting Dionne with my checkbook was like locking up Jesse James in the bank and telling him not to touch the money. Maybe I should have known better. But I thought that after all those years of distrusting Dionne, we had put all the bad stuff behind us, and I thought it was okay finally to let my guard down.

  Dionne was obviously envious of what I had accomplished and felt overshadowed. I was gaining more and more notoriety in my sport and was getting more and more attention. I did a lot of interviews, so I was in the newspapers, on the radio, and on television, and my name was starting to grow in Southern California. But family always came first with me, and I never pulled rank on my sister or tried to demean her. I never felt as if she owed me anything or was somehow beneath me. I never rubbed my success in Dionne’s face. Yes, I was Lisa Leslie the basketball player, but playing hoops was what I did; it was not who I was. Dionne knew that I loved her completely, so getting burned again by her was one of the worst things that ever happened to me. I still find it hard to believe that my sister would steal my identity.

  When Tiffany lived in the condo with Mom and me after I started playing in the WNBA, she would cook a few days a week, so I paid her for that. I would have given more to Dionne, but she had already stolen my identity. Tiffany never asked me for anything, but I gave her everything, anyway. Dionne? I would have taken care of her first because she was the oldest. I would have made sure that she and my nieces and nephews were okay, but for some reason, Dionne felt like I owed her something. She felt as if she deserved something and was not being treated fairly. She reminded me of my USC teammates who would not put in the effort on the track or in the weight room, yet still expected to win championships. Dionne’s reasoning was twisted. She actually said to me, “Everything comes easy to you. I have to work hard!”

  I almost lost it. “What are you talking about? You have watched me practice, train, and play. You know how much time I put into g
oing to school and working at my craft. You have seen me do it all, and that seems like nothing to you? You don’t think that I work hard?”

  Dionne was totally irrational. I had to deal with the reality that my sister was a con artist, and I had to decide if I should push her completely out of my life or forgive her and pray for her. When it came down to it, I had to forgive her. I honestly believe she has a sickness, some chemical imbalance that has plagued her since she was little or maybe all of her life. That may not be medically accurate, but sometimes I have to tell myself things like that so I can try to understand her.

  And it is such a shame. My sister can be a beautiful, loving person who will do anything for you and, nine times out of ten, will kill you with kindness. But on that tenth time, watch out for your wallet.

  I cannot afford that kind of friend, let alone that kind of family member. So I decided to love Dionne from a distance. When she was close, my weakness was too obvious, and my vulnerability to her deviousness was much too high. Whatever Dionne got from her scam against me was nothing compared to the distance she created in our family. I was the victim, but I felt sorry for my sister and the sorry mess her life had become.

  People kept asking me, “Do you have any idea who stole your identity?”

  The DMV detective wanted to know. “Do you plan to press charges?” he asked.

  Dionne’s future was in my hands. I hated what she had done to me, but she was still my sister, and she did have four children. I was concerned about them. I struggled with my decision, and I prayed about it. At the end of the day, her kids—Marquis, Brionne, Jacquise, and Artavius—were the only reasons that I did not put my sister behind bars.