Pam Shriver, the 21-time Grand Slam doubles champion, got a call from the general manager of the Doubletree Hotel in Marina Del Rey on Monday.
“We have your awards,” he told her.
She thought he was talking about hotel rewards, following her family’s recent stay there. It was their evacuation destination as the Palisades fire in Los Angeles creeped dangerously close to Shriver’s Brentwood home.
Soon, she realized he was talking about the Grand Slam trophy collection that had been in her son’s car when it was stolen from the hotel. 11 trophies from the U.S. and French Opens were taken overnight Wednesday January 15, along with a number of family photos.
They came back too.
“Whoever stole the car, I don’t think they realized they were getting some photos from my mother’s side of the family and a bunch of trophies,” Shriver said in an interview Thursday.
Just under two weeks after they were taken, a box of trophies and photos appeared near the hotel’s parking lot gate. Shriver said that Det. Damien Levesque of the Los Angeles Police Department told her that they collected the box Tuesday. The footage, the detective said, showed someone emerging from a black SUV to leave the box by the hotel. Shriver collected the trophies the next day after they were fingerprinted.
Recovery of the photos and the trophies ended phase one of a story that began two weeks ago when Shriver woke up at the Marina del Rey DoubleTree and realized her son’s car had been stolen. Shriver won many of her titles with Martina Navratilova, the former world No. 1 who won more than 50 majors during her storied career, and described having the trophies returned as “feeling like [they] won another major” in a post on X.
GO DEEPER
Pam Shriver says 11 Grand Slam trophies stolen during L.A. fire evacuation
Shriver spent the day trying to deal with that unfortunate event while sending messages to Donna Vekic, the top Croatian tennis player she helps coach. Vekic, the No. 18 seed at the Australian Open, was preparing for her third-round match in Melbourne, 7,000 miles away.
Vekic won, but there was no news of Shriver’s belongings aside from her five Wimbledon doubles trophies. They were in a racket bag that had ended up in a different car to her son George’s stolen Dodge Durango.
Despite their prestige and meaning, the trophies — and sports memorabilia in general — have very little value because they are self-evidently stolen. The car was the item of greater value to any would-be thief.
Shriver was glad to have them back, she said, and to be back in her home, which was not damaged as firefighters were able to hold the fire line about a mile from her property. In the rush of the evacuation, the contents of that box was something of a blur.
Among the Grand Slam trophies, was another cherished award — a totem for being named the Brentwood Country Club’s most improved golfer in 2001.
That’s something Navratilova doesn’t have.
(Photo: Susan Mullane / USA Today Sports)
