‘Hookers: Saved on the Strip’ focuses on hope, redemption

Some people have their lives turned into Lifetime movies. Unfortunately, others seemingly have Lifetime movies turned into their lives.

During her 16 years as a Las Vegas prostitute (five of them off-and-on), Annie Lobert was raped and beaten multiple times, held hostage, and tied up by her pimp and stuffed in the trunk of her car to be driven out to the desert to die. One client tried to throw her out a hotel window. And she nearly died of a cocaine overdose.

But now, Lobert is hoping to show women who've found themselves in similar situations that there's hope, as she helps others turn their lives around with "Hookers: Saved on the Strip" (7 p.m. Wednesday, Investigation Discovery).

Lobert overdosed on Aug. 2, 2003, and says she realized that if she continued on that path, she'd soon be dead. "It took me a couple of years to heal, to be honest with you," she admits. But once she got back on her feet in 2005, she began reaching out to women still trapped in the business through her ministry, Hookers for Jesus.

"There's something about helping someone that changes you inside," she says. "It's the most enriching experience. You couldn't put a price tag on what it feels like inside."

That hands-on help is the focus of "Saved on the Strip," as each episode spotlights one of the women at Destiny House, the transitional home founded by Lobert and The Church at South Las Vegas, as she completes a months-long life rehabilitation.

Wednesday's premiere follows Regina, who started hooking as a 19-year-old in the Navy. Not surprisingly, her search for mainstream employment, especially in this economy, doesn't go well considering that her rap sheet is exponentially longer than her resume. And she seems absolutely crestfallen to learn she could be facing a future of earning in a month what she used to make in an hour.

But Regina begins the painfully slow process of starting over by working on her interview skills with HELP of Southern Nevada and trying to get her arrest records sealed so that one day she might pass a background check. And as the frustrations mount, the cameras are rarely far away.

"Some girls are so gung-ho in the beginning, but when they realize that they're actually putting their life out there, they get a little scared. They get a little self-conscious," Lobert says of the sporadic filming that lasted from April through September. "But in the end, they realize it's for the greater good. ... They end up embracing the fact that when they put their story out there, they're going to help a lot of different ladies. Not only just other ladies like them, but they're going to help people see that there's a different view to prostitutes."

Lobert gets emotional talking about her friends who were killed by their pimps or clients, and it's one of the worst feelings in the world to know you're responsible for dredging up that pain -- somewhat akin, I imagine, to having to punch a kitten in the face. But those friends are her inspiration, and women like them are exactly whom Lobert is hoping to reach.

"I've had so many people try to offer us filming opportunities," she says, and with a provocative name like Hookers for Jesus, it's easy to see why. "Some of the other companies were wanting to present the story as glamour, and we didn't really want the glamour side to be over the actual realities of what really happens when a girl gets sex trafficked."

Rest assured, there's nothing glamorous about "Saved on the Strip." Plenty of harsh truths are revealed, and tears are shed. One of the apartments in Regina's price range reeks of urine. Las Vegas rarely has seemed so ominous.

The series -- currently scheduled for three episodes, with the potential for more if ratings warrant -- is, like some of the women it features, a little rough around the edges. But it's refreshing to see a reality show about hope and redemption instead of the usual diet of "The Real Housewives," "Jersey Shore" and their knockoffs.

And while camera crews followed the women at some of their most vulnerable moments, truly intimate scenes such as private counseling sessions were off-limits. And Lobert sees the filming as a force for good.

"What's really great about the cameras is, they empower (the women) to not be afraid," she says. "That's what happened within myself, and every girl that has done the filming has gotten this new confidence within herself. It's really amazing, actually, to see it happen.

"Over a period of days or weeks or months that we're filming, I see a totally different person from when they first started."

Christopher Lawrence's Life on the Couch column appears on Sundays. E-mail him at clawrence@ reviewjournal.com.