Lisa Guerrero vividly remembers the words her mother, a Chilean immigrant, said to her in agony after a battle with cancer.. “She called me and told me: ‘Lisita, never forget that you are a Guerrero. Guerrero means warrior. You were born to fight.’ After that she died ”.
That message when Lisa Guerrero was only 8 years old she did not understand then, but as time went by and facing serious adversity, the Chicago-born woman used Lucy Guerrero’s words as her engine to get ahead.
“It took me an entire career to discover that I am a warrior, that I am exactly what I am supposed to be helping other people,” says Guerrero, a leading US investigative reporter on the syndicated Inside Edition show.
Lisa Guerrero, winner of dozens of awards for her work as a reporter over the past 17 years, reveals in a chat with La Opinión how she managed -according to her own words- to find her purpose after considering taking his own life.
Thinking of her mother, Lisa travels back in time to a time when they were standing in line at a store. The woman behind her back was angry when she heard Mrs. Guerrero speak English with an accent, the journalist recounted.
“This big blonde woman was furious with my mother and said, ‘Go back to Mexico!’ I remember how My mother, with her long black hair, turns to the woman’s face and answers: ‘Ma’am, I’m from Chile, not from Mexico. They are not even on the same continent, ignorant woman’. And so he took my hand and we walked out of that store.”
For Lisa Guerrero, that display of her mother’s fierceness and pride would be her inspiration long after.
In 2003, Guerrero worked as a fieldside reporter for NFL Monday Night Football games for ABC. However, what could have been a great professional achievement for the sports journalist quickly turned into a nightmare. She says that she suffered verbal abuse and excessive criticism. The result was fear, anxiety, even a miscarriage in the middle of a game broadcast, and eventually a depression that nearly caused her to take her own life.
She decided to write all those experiences in a book: “Warrior; My Path to Being Brave” (Warrior: my way to be brave), which now aims to be her who inspires other women.
“My book is a warning as well as a love letter to young women, because in my career I was very successful, but I also faced many challenges”Guerrero explains. “And many of the challenges I faced were avoidable.”
Lisa Guerrero’s unexpected route to success as a journalist
Lisa Guerrero was born in Chicago, grew up in San Diego raised by her father, who was an American, and later came to Orange County, in the Los Angeles area. It was then that she was part of the Los Angeles Rams cheerleading squad.
Guerrero worked in Los Angeles as a sports reporter for CBS2, FOX11 and FSN. She then came those difficult years of depression.
The way she rose from the ground up to reinvent herself as a journalist with countless awards, one of them beating the famed Anderson Cooper, is a great story. She went from being an NFL cheerleader, to a humiliated reporter, to a Playboy model, and from there to a noted investigative reporter..
After becoming unemployed after a failed season at Monday Night Football games, Lisa was given the opportunity to be on the cover of Playboy magazine at the age of 41, something she says she had turned down multiple times because she was a sportscaster. This time she accepted.
“I made that incredibly risky decision and it caused a lot of commotion because I had been a reporter for Monday Night Football, for being 41 years old and for being Latina,” she comments in a chat with La Opinión. “Playboy cover models are always young, blonde Americans.”
Then Inside Edition did a story about Lisa and her decision to pose for Playboy. One thing would lead to another.
“During the interview I told them that I wanted to work for that show and they ended up hiring me. I’ve been working with Inside Edition for 17 years,” says Guerrero, who 13 years ago was named Inside Edition’s chief investigative correspondent.
“Now all that suffering and pain that I had I use to persecute bad people on behalf of other people who have experienced pain and suffering,” says the Chilean-American journalist. “I found my voice, I found my purpose, weirdly it came because of Playboy, but honestly it’s a miracle story I can hardly believe it.”
Among the many stories published by Guerrero, there is one that she mentions as the one that makes her most proud: that of the mysterious murder of the girl Juliette Geurts2 years old, which she helped solve in 2012.
A woman contacted her on Facebook saying that several years ago her 2-year-old niece was beaten to death in her crib.. The police had not charged anyone and the three adults who were in that house in Nebraska had gone to live in another state.
“My team and I located the three adults in different states and got two of them to say on camera that Dustin Chauncey had beaten Juliette Geurts to death in her own crib,” Guerrero recounts.
Guerrero’s revealing reports resulted in the formation of a grand jury in the case. Chauncey was arrested. “I was in court two years later when he was found guilty of killing Juliette and now he’s going from 80 years to life in prison,” he says.
His message to young people: talk to your parents and grandparents
Lisa Guerrero, who says she’s a fan of Los Angeles sports teams and can always enjoy a michelada at Dodger or Rams stadium, admits that her Spanish is not good because when her mother died she lost a part of her Latin American culture.
She says that despite that she feels very connected to her Latino heritage, but now she asks young people not to stop connecting with their roots, to talk to their parents and grandparents.
“We are living in an environment where we are taught that being Latino is shameful, that there is something wrong with us, that there is something wrong with our parents for coming to look for a better life.; We have every right to be here, we have every right to take our space, to live in this community,” says Guerrero.
And he adds: “Learn Spanish, learn the culture, be part of it, be proud of who you are.”
Finally, Guerrero comments that La Opinión means a lot to her because when she was young it was a vehicle that served her to communicate with her community. in the Los Angeles area.
“I think the newspaper itself is very significant to me in the way it connects conversations and cultures. So I appreciate what you guys have done in the community for so long and also for bringing pride and culture to people who need it and who deserve it.”
Read more:
– A nightmare NFL debut, a miscarriage and the spiral that Lisa Guerrero managed to stop
– The legacy of “La Morena” Hinojos, the artist behind the art on the Super Bowl ticket and images
– “I was destroyed”: Andrés Cantor opens his heart about the most special story of his life
