In 2008, we needed to find an apartment in Los Angeles as soon as we could. The trip from Florida was difficult for us, because we’d driven an old car my mother had given us that was on its last legs.
We found an ad on Craigslist for a guy who wanted to share an apartment he only lived in when he was in town on business. We met Deon Derrico, a handsome black man, at a Starbucks in Burbank, and made the deal.
Deon lived in Las Vegas, most of the time. The apartment in Burbank was for use occasionally because he was trying to get into acting.
Since I am particularly good at digital photography, I took Deon all over Los Angeles and shot publicity pictures of him. I also wrote his International Movie Data Base biography.
It claimed that Deon established Deon Derrico Entertainment, Inc. which is the umbrella corporation for a wide-ranging company offering acting classes, a talent agency, as well as production of film and television programming.
The only problem: It wasn't true. In fact, with four feature films, ten TV episodes and ten student films, I turned out to have more acting credits than Deon.
(Of course, after I knew him, he and his wife Karen had fourteen children and in 2020 he sold a reality TV show to TLC, called "Doubling Down with the Derricos" which is in its fourth season.)
You win, Deon. You're famous.
After a few months of living with Deon, we were able to get a new used car, a White PT Cruiser, and we moved into a Glendale garage apartment next to a stable that had just one horse. The main house was once been owned by actress Bette Davis.
