One of the longest-running tropes from 1970s and ’80s TV was the stripper with the heart of gold. Fast forward to the ’90s and 2000s, and the running joke among Gen X dudes paying for female attention in strip clubs evolved into “let me guess, you’re in nursing school.” The reality, as anyone with common sense knows, is that women working the sex industry are out of options, financially desperate, and living a harsh lifestyle. They sell the image of their bodies and false pretenses of interest to men of degenerate morality. Or so I thought.
An investigation took me to a well-known gentlemen’s club in metro Detroit several years ago. I was contacted by the in-house counsel of a commercial property insurer and informed that, several nights earlier, a violent fight broke out at this club—starting inside the bar and extending out into the parking lot. The details were grim. It was presumed to have begun between two men and grew to involve several individuals. The bouncers were unable to quash it. According to the information I received initially, one of the individuals in the fight received life-threatening injuries when he fell during the clash and struck his head on the bar top.
There was some ambiguity to how he fell, if he really did fall, or if the injuries were due to actions of another person. My client wanted answers with the aim of determining fault before litigation began. They were trying to stay ahead of things. Time was of the essence, and the attorney wanted as much information as possible—statements on the record, photographs, and evidence—before any claims for liability were filed against the business and ultimately the insurer.
With little information to go off, except the attorney’s limited knowledge of the event, I pulled the redacted local police and fire reports—which are written quickly on the scene with the prose of a 5-year-old. They contain the fragmented observational accounts and maybe, if you’re lucky, a witness name and contact information. As I suspected, the reports were unintelligible BS.
I ran down the emergency first responder, a firefighter, and got a fairly vivid description of the incident. Before ending the interview, he dropped a key tidbit.
“That guy should have died, but I witnessed a miracle.” My eyebrows raised. “Tell me more.” The responder explained that upon his arrival, and after wading through the crowd in the club, he saw a woman—almost completely nude and obviously a stripper—providing medical attention to the injured man. He described the injuries to the man as gravely severe, and that this mysterious woman kept him alive by providing medical care at the scene in a manner that suggested to him this woman was more than just a stripper. Advanced, remarkable, precise. He credited her with saving the man’s life.
I needed to know who this woman was. I needed her statement for the investigation, I needed her witness account, and I needed to know how she saved this man’s life. I contacted the strip club, identified myself as working on behalf of the insurer to gain their cooperation, and went over there. I conducted the investigation on-site, got statements from everyone present, but was informed the woman in question wasn’t there. Furthermore, the club owners were hesitant to even give me her stage name. I was told she was a private person and didn’t want to be involved. An unsung hero who wanted to remain unsung.
Undaunted, I spoke with another dancer at the club and determined the woman in question worked at the club only on weekends, typically on Saturday nights. I drew out a physical description but no name, as she uses several aliases on stage.
Several nights later, I returned to the strip club under the guise of a clubgoer and easily identified the woman in question. Unlike most of the strippers who appeared in their early to mid-20s, she was older, possibly in her mid-30s, although still capable for the job and clearly popular with the crowd. I was apprehensive about approaching her too directly, so I waited patiently at the bar, knowing at some point she’d be walking the floor looking for prospective lap dances. Sure enough, after an hour, she approached me and pulled that well-known false interest that captures the minds of the lonely and low IQ.
“Actually, I’m here to talk to you,” I said.
She immediately knew I was the investigator and disengaged.
“Look, can we talk for just a couple minutes, off the record, I promise.”
She wasn’t buying it.
“I don’t need to know who you are. I won’t ask you anything about yourself. I just need to know what you saw, nothing more. Ten minutes, I’m out of here, and you’ll never see me again.”
She told me to meet her out back in 10 minutes. She emerged from the club with a second female and a bouncer who paced about 30 feet away, out of earshot, but close enough to watch us talk. She gave her account of the fight, and it was apparent that she was highly educated. She used clinical phrasing and terminology. She grew more comfortable talking to me because I was not recording, taking notes, or asking invasive questions.
“You’re no stripper. You’re someone else pretending to be a stripper,” I said.
She nodded and let me in on the secret. She was a nurse and, according to her, not just any nurse, but the head nurse for a hospital health system in Michigan, which she did not name. A highly trained, highly educated, and highly experienced medical professional. She had a successful professional career, and this was her side hustle. She was operating in two completely different worlds and careful not to let them collide.
A man in need of immediate medical attention caused those two planes of existence to converge. She saw a man who could have died and transformed. She’d saved a life.
But now, she said couldn’t be involved, couldn’t allow her secret night self to expose her “real” self. She was clever. You can’t subpoena a person who doesn’t really exist.
This case resolved itself. The injured man was still alive weeks after I concluded the investigation. There were multiple witnesses on the record, documentation, and a lack of aggressive litigation, nullifying the need for the attorney to exhaust time and money on a subpoena. Fault was never determined, and the police investigation remained open at the conclusion of my work.
True to my word, the hero with many stage names never saw me again. But I’m unable to forget her heroism. I can’t help but wonder: Did she escape that world, or does she dwell in it to this day?
J.Z. Delorean is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based Professional Investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
