Ex-Laker Girl gets a new groove on

Now out of the spotlight, DeeDee Weathers-Cox is enjoying her most gratifying work yet: helping cancer survivors get on their feet and move.
By Greg Hardesty
OC Register
Oct. 12, 2011

[Photos and Video]

ORANGE – Lakers guard Byron Scott drives to the hoop, flips the basketball to a cutting Vlade Divac and – SLAAAM DUNK! – two points for the bearded center from Yugoslavia.

It’s 1992, a lean year for the Lakers, but a fine one for DeeDee Weathers. She has one of the greatest dance jobs in the world, cheering, smiling and generally urging the team on with her fellow Laker Girls. Squint at a Lakers highlight from this era and you might catch a glimpse of young, beautiful Weathers courtside, pushing the oh-so-cool L.A. crowd to cheer louder.

Nearly 20 years later, DeeDee Weathers-Cox (she’s added a husband and a daughter over the years) is still cheering. And she’s still playing for a crowd, too, though Jack Nicholson is nowhere in sight.

Her current dance job, she says, is the most gratifying one she’s ever had.

On a recent Monday night, in Orange, Weathers-Cox stands before about a dozen middle-age to older men and women, a Frank Sinatra tune blasting from her iPod. Then, snapping her fingers, she asks: “You guys ready to be cool?”

Her students start parroting her moves, dancing and snapping their fingers to Ol’ Blue Eyes’ chestnut:

Some day when I’m awfully low
When the world is cold
I will feel a glow just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight

•••

After she had a partial mastectomy of her right breast, in 2007, Nickie Acosta, 41, of Santa Ana, couldn’t easily lift her right arm.

Like many cancer survivors, Acosta’s scars – some psychological – ran deep. She felt broken, damaged.

But eight months ago she started attending a weekly dance therapy class taught by Weathers-Cox at St. Joseph Hospital. Since then, Acosta has transformed. She smiles more; she’s happier with herself.

And, when she busts out moves in class, Acosta can raise her right hand high in the air.

“She makes everything fun,” Acosta says of her teacher.

For Weathers-Cox, students like Acosta are proof that she finally has the perfect job.

From the time she was a little girl, growing up in Lexington, Ky., one of six kids raised by a single mother, Weathers-Cox danced. Her dream was to be a star ballerina.

And, for a time, she was headed down that path. She studied with the Lexington Ballet Company, the only black dancer out of about 100 in the company. At 5 feet 8 inches, Weathers-Cox was taller than most other female dancers. She was talented, too, and dedicated. Dancing, she says now, was her ticket out of Kentucky.

After serving an apprenticeship with the Louisville Ballet Company, Weathers-Cox earned a full dance scholarship to Southern Methodist University in Dallas. In 1989, she graduated from SMU with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts.

But realizing that the road to becoming a star ballerina would be long, difficult and by no means guaranteed, Weathers-Cox settled after college into a different kind of dancing job, at the Epcot theme park at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla. She danced there for three years.

To move up as a dancer, however, Weathers-Cox had to live in either New York or Los Angeles. Preferring warmer weather, she chose L.A. And, soon after getting here, she heard about auditions to become a Laker Girl.

Problem was, she didn’t know what a “Laker Girl” was.

“I didn’t follow sports,” she says.

Landing a job as a Laker Girl isn’t easy. Hundreds try out for the 22-woman squad, and Weathers-Cox spent two weekends in auditions and interviews before getting selected.

She stayed on as a Laker Girl for 2 ½ years, from 1992 to 1994. The job was a springboard, too, helping her land several successful gigs in acting and music.

After leaving the Lakers, Weathers-Cox spent more than four years with Earth, Wind and Fire, dancing on stages around the world with the hugely popular R&B and funk band. She also had roles in such movies as “The Wedding Planner,” “Hercules” and “Anastasia.”

None of that, she says, compares to what she’s doing now.

A physical therapy assistant at St. Joseph Hospital’s Center for Cancer Prevention and Treatment, Weathers-Cox has been teaching the dance and movement class there for about a year.

•••

Kathy Berger, director of rehabilitation services at St. Joseph Hospital, watches a recent evening dance class.

“She has such a gift,” Berger says of Weathers-Cox. “We’re so lucky to have her.”

Weathers-Cox joined the hospital in 2008 after deciding she wanted a job that would let her focus on her home life (she’s been married for 18 years and she has a daughter, 8), though she still auditions for commercials, film and television.

Physical therapy has been an interest since college. So joining St. Joe’s, in Orange, was a nice fit for the Anaheim resident. Her daughter also underwent two years of physical therapy due to be being born prematurely.

It was Weathers-Cox’s idea to launch the class. While working with a stroke patient, she noticed how well the woman responded to line dancing after the woman mentioned how much she used to enjoy it.

Weathers-Cox lobbied the hospital to offer the class to patients for free, and the weekly sessions have grown from about a half-dozen participants to, at times, more than 20. Her students range in age from 20 to 80.

“I’ve never heard of such a class offered in a hospital setting,” says Irene Marquez, a 10-year cancer survivor from Laguna Niguel.

“I’m constantly amazed at how much I get out of this.”

The dance and movement provides patients with more than diagnosis and treatment, Berger says. It’s a way for patients to stay fit for life.

Weathers-Cox puts it a different way.

“This is all about having fun,” she says, “and coming alive.”