Five years ago, when they were teenagers in Orange County, Laila Laine's stepcousin Vanessa excitedly pulled her aside.
"She said, 'Guess who I met and guess who called me -- Kobe Bryant!' " Laine, now a Huntington Beach paralegal recalled, still laughing. "I said, 'Sure. Have another drink.'
"No one believed her."
If Vanessa Laine, then 17, was known for anything, it was for her sheltered life. Her parents scarcely permitted her to date, let alone entertain advances from NBA superstars in their 20s. When she had gone with friends the year before to Magic Mountain, Laila Laine said, Vanessa had to call home hourly.
Her one stab at the glamorous life -- a three-month stint as a music video extra -- had fallen into her lap when a company trawling for fresh faces had accosted her as she was leaving a hip-hop concert in Irvine. She'd gotten a handful of jobs, all with her mom on-set to chaperone her.
"Never in a million years did we expect what happened to happen," said the stepcousin. "She was just a normal girl. With a normal life."
Now Vanessa Urbieta Cornejo Laine is 22-year-old Vanessa Bryant, the unlikely costar of one of the more compelling dramas in contemporary sports. Since 2001, when Bryant married her, temporarily estranging his parents and many of his former advisors, she has been viewed as one of the few powerful influences on Los Angeles' most powerful professional athlete.
But lately, as her once-idealized young husband has spiraled from trial to tribulation -- sexual assault charges in Colorado, admissions of extramarital sex on national television, lost coaches, lost teammates, lost games, lost fans, claims of wife-poaching ("Vanessa-gate," Sports Illustrated recently called the ugly exchange that preceded Karl Malone's official retirement from professional basketball on Sunday) -- that influence has increasingly been drawn into the spotlight.
Paparazzi stalk her. Tabloids speculate about her. Her purple "makeup" diamond (the Santa Monica jeweler reiterated last month to The Times that it cost $4 million, though other sources say that figure was leaked as a prank to reporters) made People magazine. Her appearance at the 2003 news conference in which Bryant denied raping a Colorado hotel employee became both stock news footage and a "Saturday Night Live" skit.
