Warrior: My Path to Being Brave

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Rebecca Aguilar, Emmy award-winning reporter, SPJ President (2021-2022), Founder of Latinas in Journalism, and Founder of Wise Latinas Linked Furthermore, in 2006 she joined the nationally syndicated newsmagazine inside edition as a correspondent. Lisa Guerrero has more than 40 journalism awards, including eight National Headliner Awards. (Dilip Vishwanat / Sporting News via Getty Images)

On June 15, 2006, Guerrero became a correspondent on the TV news magazine Inside Edition. She later became the show's chief investigative correspondent and has worked on undercover stories and investigative reports. In 2011, she won the National Headliner Award for Best Investigative Report, beating Anderson Cooper for her undercover exposé on air duct cleaning scams. I found the treasure trove of old Beta tapes,’’ Guerrero said. “And I was really reluctant to look at them because I was so traumatized.”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?

During her career in sports broadcasting, Guerrero covered Super Bowls, Worlds Series, NBA Finals, and interviewed sports superstars. From the outside it seemed glamourous, but often she was miserable, told to smile more, argue less, and show a lot of leg and cleavage. Colleagues would joke—sometimes on national TV—that she clinched big interviews because of sexual acts rather than talent. She made a mistake on air during the opening game on Monday Night Football that cost her her sportscasting career… and almost her 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." 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.This is a mixed bag. Some very interesting stories combined with the author's skimming over important life details, then spending too much time complaining about the consequences she suffered from making very bad decisions. It makes for a quirky, entertaining and worthwhile book, but it doesn't have the kind of impact Lisa Guerrero wants and detracts from any credibility she thinks she has as a so-called "investigative journalist." Guerrero began her show-business career in the 1980s as a cheerleader for the Los Angeles Rams, after which she became Entertainment Director for the Atlanta Falcons and New England Patriots. In the 1990s, she starred in Aaron Spelling's Sunset Beach as the female jewel thief Francesca Vargas. She also guest-starred on Frasier (as Joanne, the woman Frasier meets in the airport and follows onto a plane in the Season 4 finale "Odd Man Out" and Season 5 premiere "Frasier's Imaginary Friend"), Cybill, George Lopez and In the Heat of the Night. Her pregame scenarios tend to also include the possibility that the interview subject might simply make a break for it. Suggested Read: ESPN’s Israel Gutierrez Committed Suicide Once, Why? Lisa Guerrero Married Life, Husband, Kids

If you’ve forgotten Guerrero’s ignominious debut on “Monday Night Football,’’ on Sept. 4, 2003, she is here with precise and vivid details. Because as she set out to write this book, she dusted off the videos of the worst year of her professional life, took a deep breath and pressed play. Moreover, in an interview, Lisa even mentioned she went through a suicidal phase. Fortunately, she recovered. MARTIN: Can I just — just in the spirit of fairness, we need to share with the person you wrote about says about his perception of events. Some of the excerpts from the book have previously been made public in advance of its publication. And this terrible episode where you, you know, had a miscarriage in the middle of a broadcast, is something that had been previously made public. And the producer in question, he — you know, you talk about verbal abuse, you talk about emotional abuse, you talk about undermining you, not allowing you to kind of do the job in a way that would allow you to actually do it to your best effort. And he vehemently denies all of this. And I just want to read a statement that he or his representatives gave to “The New York Post”. He says the following — he says, I always tried to be Lisa’s biggest advocate, starting for the moment that I hired her. Her memory of that season and mine are quite different. He says, this is the first time I’m learning of her pregnancy, and I’m sorry that she struggled through that difficult time without the full support of the team surrounding her. And he says, I unequivocal disagree with Lisa’s account of the nature of my interactions with her. That’s not how I recall our time together during her tenure at MNF, “Monday Night Football”, and it makes me very sad. Do you want to respond to that? After reading I hope to meet Lisa Guerrero in person! And thank her for her hard work all these years. Women like her are what help to evolve the workplace, and society. She definitely broke through a few glass ceilings but not without difficulty. When her incredibly attractive husband dumps her after he refuses to spend more than a day or two at a time with her at home in retirement, she naively believes he just likes to go on long golf trips with the boys and isn't cheating on her. Right. That's why he secretly moved out when she was out of town, lied to her, and broke up over the phone. For some reason she continues to praise him when she should have shared much more of what really was going on.Fifteen years later, Guerrero hosted the Secrets of Playboy. The show won the Critics Choice Award for Best Crime and Justice Show in 2022. [11] Her in-studio sit down interviews with the survivors earned critical praise. [12] Inside Edition [ edit ] I liked the book most when Guerrero was detailing her experiences working for the Falcons and then the Patriots. I also was eager to hear how she'd describe her experience on Monday Night Football. And I certainly felt for her when she talked about some of the big, hard things happening in her personal life. 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. Fast forward a few years, and Guerrero has achieved phenomenal success as Inside Edition's Chief Investigative Correspondent. Her stories have led to arrests, changed federal legislation and policies at Fortune 500 companies, and helped shine a light on crime, scams, child abuse, and even cold case murders. And in the last decade alone, she has won over thirty-five national journalism honors and awards.

Guerrero, Lisa (January 24, 2023). Warrior: My Path to Being Brave. Hachette Books. ISBN 978-0-306-82949-9. GUERRERO: And I believe that bravery is like a muscle, it’s something you can practice and get better at with time. And I really wanted people to learn how to take their pain and turn it into power. In 2003, she left The Best Damn Sports Show Period to join ABC's Monday Night Football [7] [ dead link] [8] [9] as a sideline reporter. Guerrero was fired from the Monday Night Football team after one season. Lisa Guerrero chronicles her iconic career—from dealing with harassment as a sports broadcaster to chasing “bad guys” for Inside Edition— and proves that through small, daily acts, bravery is a muscle we can strengthen over time. These days? It’s hardly a coincidence that in her new role, she specializes in calling out bullies on behalf of the powerless.

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Indeed, in every talk-show appearance that ensued, Guerrero would mention her interest in continuing her broadcasting career, but as in entertainment news or for a news magazine. She said that after “Inside Edition” had her on as a guest, an executive producer called her agent and said: “Our viewers really loved her. Is she working for anybody right now?” She was hired on June 15, 2006. MARTIN: Well, Lisa, you’ve had just such a remarkable career. Lots of ups and lots of downs. Lots of downs that then become ups. Where are you now? Like now that you’ve told it, now that you’ve lived it, you know, how do you feel about all that? Do you think it was worth it?