International Tennis Hall of Fame member Pam Shriver has her trophies back, regaining the dozen or so pieces of hardware that were in a car stolen from the hotel where she was staying after evacuating from her home during the spread of devastating wildfires in the greater Los Angeles area.
"It was an interesting chapter. I wish the trophies could talk," Shriver said in a telephone interview Friday. "I would like to have known where they've been."
Shriver won 21 Grand Slam doubles championships — all but one alongside Martina Navratilova — a gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics and a total of 111 doubles titles. Shriver, now a TV commentator and coach, was inducted into the sport's Hall in 2002.
Like so many other LA residents, Shriver left her home as part of a mandatory evacuation as the fires spread. In the end, she said, her home was fine.
But while she was staying at a hotel, a car that contained some of her personal belongings, including family photos going back decades, was taken. The car still has not been recovered, Shriver said, but the trophies were dropped off in boxes placed outside the hotel about 10 days later, and she finally got them back this week.
"The trophies were buried in the back of the car. You couldn't look in the window and see them," she said. "I don't think they were of any good to the people who took the car. So they ended up returning them."
Shriver first heard the good news via a phone call from the manager of the hotel. A detective picked up the trophies the next day to fingerprint them, Shriver said.
"Then the trophies were released to me," she said. "I regained custody."
The haul included her five trophies for winning the U.S. Open women's doubles event — in 1983, 1984, 1986, 1987 and 1991 — plus a bowl she received from the U.S. Tennis Association after having been the singles runner-up in 1978 at age 16 as an amateur who, Shriver recalled, "got no money, no trophy, some flowers."
Also in the car were the four French Open doubles trophies she and Navratilova won in 1984, 1985, 1987 and 1988. There was at least one other silver trophy from tennis, plus — Shriver related with a laugh — the reward she received for being honored as the most improved golfer at Brentwood Country Club in 2001.