5 years ago, if they had been teens, Laila Laine’s step-cousin Vanessa excitedly pulled her aside.

“She stated, ‘Guess whom we met and guess whom called me personally — Kobe Bryant!’ ” Laine, a Huntington Beach paralegal recalled. “we stated, ‘Sure. Have another drink.’ No body thought her.”

Then 17, was known for anything, it was for her sheltered life if Vanessa Laine. Her moms and dads barely allowed her to date. Whenever she went with buddies the 12 months before to Magic hill, Laila Laine stated, Vanessa needed to phone house hourly.

Her one stab at glamour — 3 months being a music video clip additional — dropped into her lap whenever a business searching for faces that are fresh her at a hip-hop concert. She’d gotten a few jobs, along with her mother on-set to chaperone her.

“Never in a million years did we expect what occurred to happen,” stated the step-cousin. “She ended up being merely a standard girl. With a normal life.”

Now Vanessa Urbieta Cornejo Laine is 22-year-old Vanessa Bryant, not likely costar of 1 of this more dramas that is compelling activities. Since 2001, whenever Bryant married her, temporarily estranging their moms and dads as well as others, she’s got been mostly of the influences that are powerful Los Angeles’ most powerful pro athlete.

But recently, as her once-idealized spouse moved from test to tribulation — intimate attack costs in Colorado, admissions of infidelity, lost coaches, lost teammates, lost games, destroyed fans, claims of wife-poaching (“Vanessa-gate,” Sports Illustrated called the unsightly change that preceded Karl Malone’s your retirement from professional basketball) — that influence is within the limelight.

Paparazzi stalk her. Tabloids speculate about her. Her purple “makeup” diamond (the jeweler says it cost $4 million, though other sources say that figure ended up being released as a prank) made individuals mag. Her look at the 2003 news meeting by which Bryant denied raping a Colorado hotel worker became stock television footage and a “Saturday Night Live” skit.

Behavior that might be dismissed as a search for identification an additional adult that is young been scrutinized inside her instance with a public used to noticing NBA spouses only if they wave from parades or show up on behalf of charity.

Whenever she got a vanity plate on her Mercedes-Benz — ICE QN — pundits wondered whether it referred to her demeanor or her precious jewelry. Whenever her spouse confirmed rumors which he’d accused malone that is ex-teammate of a pass at her in November, debate raged on talk radio and online discussion boards.

Supporters lauded her for bucking the NBA’s threshold for tomcatting. Insiders called her a pawn, saying she’d given Malone’s handlers ammo to come up with last-ditch buzz about an injured 41-year-old free representative. Experts called her a drama queen that would risk an opportunity to create her husband show he adored her.

The impression had been of a helpmate whom, by NBA requirements, was not, ahem, assisting.

“Vanessa Bryant may be the Yoko that is new, composed Sportingnews columnist Matthew Berry, comparing her towards the spouse accused of destroying the Beatles.

It absolutely was not ever thus, state those who knew her when you look at the stucco-and-cinderblock heart of Orange County where she was raised. Vanessa Bryant declined become interviewed with this article. Though she’s got made appearances with Bryant, her sole general public remark has been a written declaration released after the rape cost.

“we understand that my hubby has made a blunder — the error of adultery,” her statement stated.

“We maintain ourselves, and people who would like to talk can talk,” said Sofia Urbieta Laine, 52, better tinder her mom. “the folks whom state negative things, Jesus will need proper care of these.”

But interviews with buddies, family relations, previous classmates, Bryant’s entourage yet others that have known her depict a once-dutiful, if willful, girl that has needed to adjust, often painfully, to life while the spouse of the recreations celebrity.

Family members describe a girl that is family-oriented unexpected wealth estranged her from her relations. Old friends state she rarely calls, when she does, she will not talk about her new lease of life.

New buddies — activity individuals and buddies of her spouse — phone her a “spitfire” and a “wonderful individual” and marvel at her decision to improve her son or daughter with out a nanny. Additionally they remark on her guarded demeanor. Orange County shopkeepers battle to get together again the one-time salesgirl with the notoriously tough consumer they see.

The difficulties have actually intensified, they do say, when you look at the stressful months since Colorado.

Stories of general general public confrontations between her and the ones whom offend her — Laker fans, marriage visitors, a shoe-store supervisor — have actually proliferated.

Therefore have actually tales about her needs on the 6-foot-6 spouse, whom called her “the strongest individual i understand” and apparently married her with no prenuptial contract: “she tells him those that to put on. if he wears the jeans within the family members,” one Bryant associate stated, “”

Individuals who have crossed her or lost her invoke the saw that is old cash changing individuals. Her defenders have take that is different. Viewing her at Laker games — chattering on her behalf phone, repairing her locks, giggling along with her bodyguard or child — they see young adulthood, unremarkable except the degree to which it has been magnified by fame and money.

“She had been really sweet as a young child,” recalls Stephen Laine, who became Vanessa’s stepfather in 1990.

Vanessa had been 8 along with her cousin, Sophie, ended up being 18. Their mom had been a delivery clerk at an electronics firm where Laine, eight years her junior, had been a manager that is middle. Vanessa’s mom and delivery daddy divorced whenever she had been an infant, after which it the dad moved to Baja, Mexico, in accordance with Vanessa’s attorney. Stephen Laine stated that after he came across Sofia Urbieta, she had been a motthe woman that is solitary in her sibling’s free room. After their wedding, Vanessa started making use of Laine’s surname in place of Cornejo, her delivery daddy’s. In highschool, she changed her title.

Sooner or later, the household purchased a four-bedroom house in Garden Grove. They used Laine’s daddy’s Huntington Beach target to obtain Vanessa into his alma mater, Marina senior school, where she could go to class with Laine’s nieces, Laila and Sasha, with who she was near.

Now, the Laine household claims, Vanessa hardly talks in their mind after having a bitter breakup between her mom and stepfather. “we had been like siblings,” Laila Laine stated. Her cousins saw her once the plucky one.