Pam Shriver’s Grand Slam trophies were stolen during an LA wildfire evacuation

Shortly after Pam Shriver woke up Thursday at the Marina del Rey DoubleTree, where she has been staying since escaping the Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles last week, she discovered that her son’s car, which contained her collection of grand Slam trophies were stolen.

Shriver spent the day dealing with this unfortunate event while sending messages to Donna Vekic, the top Croatian tennis player she coaches. Vekic, the Australian Open’s No. 18 seed, was preparing for her third-round match in Melbourne, 7,000 miles away.

On Thursday evening, she attended a virtual school board meeting on a screen while watching Vekic’s three-set duel against No. 12 seed Diana Shnaider and praying in between.

Maybe someone was listening. Vekic prevailed 7-6(4), 6-7(3), 7-5. Meanwhile, one of Shriver’s sons called to tell her that she had packed her five Wimbledon doubles trophies into a racket bag that ended up in a car other than her son George’s stolen Dodge Durango.

Los Angeles police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“It’s so crazy,” she said in a telephone interview from Los Angeles after Vekic’s match. “I’m not religious, but I felt like I needed one.”

Shriver said she lost track of where her family had stowed the collected belongings as the fires neared the top of Mandeville Canyon, about a mile from her home. The stolen car contained 11 trophies from the US French Open and Australian Open, but not the five Wimbledon trophies.

Shriver, 62, stayed behind in Los Angeles while Vekic traveled to Melbourne after arranging accommodation for her carers, friends and pets at the Marina del Rey hotel.

Vekic, who reached the Wimbledon semifinals last year with Shriver in her box, drew a heart symbol and wrote “LA” on a camera lens after her first-round victory at the Australian Open.

“It is a very difficult situation for them. She is at home in LA. Their house is fine right now, but so many have lost everything and it’s a terrible situation,” Vekic said of Shriver in her press conference.

Shriver won a total of 22 Grand Slam doubles titles, 21 in women’s doubles and one in mixed doubles. She and partner Martina Navratilova are the only women’s doubles pair to win all four majors in a calendar year, and Shriver, along with Zina Garrison, won Olympic gold in women’s doubles for the United States at the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

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(Photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)