Warrior: My Path to Being Brave

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My most recent project has been a series of Frida Kahlo mixed media mosaic portraits. Like many Latinas, I consider her my favorite artist, and she represents beauty, strength, passion, and a fearless devotion to social justice as well as to her lifelong love, Diego Rivera. Well, that looks like a clear indication that Lisa and Scott have finalized their divorce and are no longer together. In 1999, Lisa Guerrero moved to the Fox Network, where she participated in shows such as Sports Geniuses, Fox Overtime, Fox Extra Innings, and the Toughman competition shows. Guerrero travelled to Egypt to tape the special Opening the Tombs of the Golden Mummies, and was the first female host of the San Diego Chargers magazine-style television show. Guerrero also co-hosted The Best Damn Sports Show Period, alongside Tom Arnold, John Salley, John Kruk and Michael Irvin. Lisa Guerrero (born April 9, 1964) is an American journalist, actress, former sportscaster, artist, and model. Since 2006, Guerrero has been an investigative correspondent for the nationally syndicated newsmagazine Inside Edition. Unfortunately, Lisa was only 9-years-old. She lost her mother due to Lymphoma Cancer and grew up without having any motherly figure to look up to.

She has many issues with men. Most men. First she stands up to the NFL management as a cheerleader. Then she took a job on a Fox Sports show as the only female harassed by the guys (surprisingly she praises Tom Arnold!). What was she expecting? She certainly had a few cases of discrimination or inappropriate jokes but she also made some really bad choices that either put her in those situations or failed to stand up for herself when she could have. As one executive told her, she was trying to be a square peg in a round hole. For as brave as she wants to claim she is, she falters then often blame-shifts in an attempt to identify with the #MeToo movement.Today, I spend a great deal of my time chasing bad guys as the Chief Investigative Correspondent for Inside Edition. It is an incredibly stressful and dangerous job. People ask me all the time about how I can be so brave. My upcoming memoir WARRIOR (Hachette, 2023) will give people practical advice on how to tap into their inner courage. Less remembered is that by the end of that season, Guerrero showed poise and polish. Brett Favre, recovering from a broken thumb and grieving the death of his father a day earlier, threw for 399 yards and four touchdowns against the Raiders in the final MNF game of 2003. And he would yell at me if I had one word wrong,’’ she said over lunch. “Every single ‘and,’ ‘but,’ ‘the’ — everything had to be exactly like he wrote it. And that really meant memorizing 30, 40 stories a game. If he runs, I’m going to chase him and have this on-camera moment where I get the one question out that the victim would ask if she could,’’ Guerrero said. “I don’t get nervous at all. I figure if he hits me or pushes me or tries to grab the camera … to me it’s all in service to the story.” She didn't get married until she was 39 to a major league baseball player. They were extremely rich with two mansions and a New York City condo. At the same time she was doing the MNF job and does nothing but complain about how bad her life was, how depressed she was, how she considered suicide, etc. This is the most-seen female sports personality in America married to a multimillionaire athlete living in luxury and she wants us to feel sorry for her because her TV boss is screaming in her earbud about her somewhat amateurish network television performance?

GUERRERO: So, because “Inside Edition” is popular with young people because of YouTube, a lot of kids watched my investigations. They binged them on their devices. I started to read the comments below my stories written by a teenager is and kids in high school and junior high school, and they would say, wow, she looks like Wonder Woman. She’s out there, you know, chasing these bad people and demanding justice. She’s brave. I want to be brave like her but I’m being bullied in school. I want to be able to stand up to my mom who is being abused by my dad. And I started reading these comments from young people and I just wept. I thought they look at me as being brave. But when I was their age, I was shy, I was awkward, I had lost my mother at eight years old. I was glasses and braces and, you know, an introvert. I was far from brave. But they see me as being brave. So, I wanted to write something that would be both a love letter and a, you know, guide to how to navigate through obstacles from the time you’re a kid, from the time you’re 58, like I am. I wanted people to know that you can always reach down into the inner warrior that I believe we all have. The reason I called the book “Warrior” is my last name Guerrero or guerrero means warrior in Spanish. And when I was little, I was eight years old when my mom was diagnosed with lymphoma. She died at 29. But before she passed away, she pulled me aside and said, Lisita (ph), never forget that your last name is Guerrero, and Guerrero means warrior. You were born to fight. So, that’s the legacy I wanted to leave in this book. I wanted everybody to know that we all have an inner warrior, we need to unleash it. In her debut memoir, Guerrero, chief investigative correspondent for Inside Edition, traces her journey to becoming a fierce “victim’s avenger” and role model. Raised by her father, a social worker, after her mother died when she was 8, Guerrero—who took her mother’s surname in homage to her heritage—missed having a woman’s guidance as she grew up. She never forgot, though, her mother’s admonition that her name, in Spanish, means warrior. To help her cope with her mother’s death, her father enrolled her in theater therapy classes, where the shy, gangly young girl discovered that she loved to perform. A model at the age of 16, she later enrolled in acting classes, but her career took an unexpected turn when she was selected to join the elite Los Angeles Rams cheerleading team. At first, she was exhilarated by the adoring fans and the camaraderie of her squad, but cheerleaders were treated as no more than “cheap labor and hot bodies,” and after four years of grueling, underpaid work, the “constant makeovers and body-shaming” made the gig unappealing. Guerrero parlayed that experience into trailblazing jobs in sports, including as entertainment director for the Atlanta Falcons and as a sportscaster in LA. She also landed a part as a glamorous bad girl on a popular soap opera. For a while, she worked at Fox Sports, where she experienced the sexism and misogyny that permeated the Fox organization. A low point of her career occurred when she was hired as a sideline reporter on Monday Night Football. Mercilessly criticized in the media as “eye candy” and harassed by her boss, she became depressed and nearly suicidal. When her marriage to a baseball star failed, she felt at an impasse—until she seized an offer from Inside Edition that catapulted her into media stardom. Still, I'm glad I read WWhat a talent, what a career, what a life, and what a treat to relive it all with this most down-to-earth of demigods. Fifteen years ago, I began studying mosaic art as a way of decompressing from my career on TV and focusing on making beautiful things out of broken pieces. That’s what I love about mosaics…they are a metaphor for life. Lisa Guerrero is exactly what her last name means in Spanish, a warrior who inspires us to push forward. The book, Warrior, is a true journey of a tenacious woman who learned to find her voice and strength through painful experiences that no one knew she was enduring. Racism, sexism, misogyny, bullying, vicious criticism, rejection, and a broken marriage are everything Lisa Guerrero has experienced in her career as a Latina, sports journalist, investigative correspondent, and actress. It's a miracle that she is still standing today. I could not put down this book because every chapter brought another sports legend or powerful entertainer and a harsh lesson learned. I recommend Lisa's book to anyone who has questioned their role in their profession and personal life and even whether they should still exist in this world. Warrior will leave you inspired and empowered to take on the world." MARTIN: You talked about that it was just, you know, contradiction after contradiction. Because on the one hand, people would say, oh, no, no. You should cut your hair you. You should wear blazers. And then on the other hand, and people wanted you to wear leotard’s and do all this other — in these tight and revealing clothes and to put highlights in your hair. What do you think that’s about?