Girlfriend who recorded Donald Sterling grew up in San Antonio

V. Stiviano, center, walks down the sideline as the Los Angeles Clippers play the Sacramento Kings during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Friday, Oct. 25, 2013, in Los Angeles. V. Stiviano, center, walks down the sideline as the Los Angeles Clippers play the Sacramento Kings during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Friday, Oct. 25, 2013, in Los Angeles. Photo: Mark J. Terrill, Associated Press Photo: Mark J. Terrill, Associated Press Image 1 of / 47 Caption Close Girlfriend who recorded Donald Sterling grew up in San Antonio 1 / 47 Back to Gallery

SAN ANTONIO — V. Stiviano, who recorded Los Angeles Clippers' owner Donald Sterling's racist remarks that subsequently got him banned from the NBA for life, was raised on the South Side of San Antonio before moving to Los Angeles during high school.

Stiviano was born Maria Vanessa Perez in San Antonio in 1983 and lived with her mother, whose maiden name was Martha Perez, and her mother's husband, Guillermo Beltran, a construction worker, British tabloid the Daily Mail reported this week.

Court and police records obtained by the Express-News Thursday indicate Martha Perez, 56, was twice sentenced to probation in Bexar County for misdemeanor theft cases, including an August 2002 incident at an Olmos Drive H-E-B in which authorities said she used her children as accomplices.

Police said she tied balloons to a shopping cart full of $113 worth of groceries and school supplies — marking it for her children before they attempted to take it out of the store without paying. As a result, two of her children were taken to a shelter while she was taken to jail. Records, however, were unclear if Stiviano — who would have been 19 at the time and reportedly living in Las Angeles — was involved in the incident.

A small plaque with the family's name is still attached to the front of a small, dilapidated house on Peabody Avenue where Martha Perez and her children once supposedly lived. The current resident and neighbors said they did not know of Stiviano or Martha Perez. It is a neighborhood in which people frequently move in and out, one neighbor explained in Spanish.

Stiviano, 31, became the subject of intense media attention after a recording of Sterling's rant was published by TMZ April 25. The racist comments spawned from a fight between the two over social media photos Stiviano posted posing with Lakers Hall of Famer Magic Johnson and Los Angeles Dodger Matt Kemp.

“It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you're associating with black people. Do you have to?” Sterling was recorded saying. “You can sleep with [African Americans]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that ... and not to bring them to my games.”

In addition to the lifetime NBA ban, Sterling was fined $2.5 million and other owners are expected to vote later on whether to force him to sell the team.

Stiviano moved to Los Angeles, where some of her family lived, sometime before graduating high school, the Daily Mail reported. She graduated in 2001 from Roosevelt High School in East Los Angeles.

The home listed as her mother's address in San Antonio is zoned in the South San Independent School District. District officials could not confirm Thursday if she attended school there prior to leaving Texas.

She changed her name from Maria Perez to Vanessa Stiviano in 2010, citing being “born from a rape case and having yet been fully accepted because of my race,” according to The Associated Press.

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Court records show no criminal charges in Bexar County and a single conviction in Los Angeles for reckless driving that stemmed from a 2012 drunken driving arrest.

She has, however, been accused in a California civil court of preying on wealthy older men for money.

Sterling's wife of more than 50 years, Rochelle Sterling, filed a lawsuit in March that contends Stiviano received $2.5 million from Donald Sterling “as part and parcel of their sexual relationship.” The two met at the 2010 Super Bowl, the suit states.

Sterling's spouse contends their money went — without her knowledge consent — to luxury cars for Stiviano, including a Ferrari and a Bentley, and to a $1.8 million Los Angeles duplex.

The defendant “engages in conduct designed to target, befriend, seduce, and then entice, cajole, borrow from, cheat and/or receive as gifts transfers of wealth from wealthy older men whom she targets for such purpose,” the lawsuit contends.

In a response to the court, Stiviano's attorney described the lawsuit as “hopelessly vague, ambiguous (and) unintelligible.” There is no law in California against giving or accepting such gifts, the filing states, describing Donald Sterling as “infamous for his gold plated dalliances.”

Staff Writers Mark D. Wilson, Alia Malik and Francisco Vara-Orta contributed to this report.

kparker@express-news.net

Twitter: @KoltenParker