 of politeness, but she kept the arachnid in a terrarium on the balcony of her Los Angeles home to be safe … until Lee realized her new pet was actually super pregnant, at which point she drove “very far away” and ditched it next to a dumpster.
Otherwise, nothing stood—or even crawled—in Lee’s way as she climbed to the top of her sport. A dropout from the prestigious Bronx High School of Science who made ends meet as a teenager by nannying and waiting tables across Manhattan, Lee took up pool in the late ’80s after stumbling into Chelsea Billiards and watching a pro named Johnny Ervolino pick corner pockets with ease. “He was so graceful,” Lee recalls. “It was mesmerizing.” Lee grew obsessed, practicing 16 hours a day on dimly lit tables, wrapping her left hand in electrical tape to memorize Ervolino’s bridge position, tacking a motivational poster to the wall of her cramped Midtown apartment. MASTER THE 8 BALL, it read, MASTER THE WORLD.
Lee (in 2008) "came on hot and heavy," says Hasson, but proved her worth at the table.
There is no question that ESPN provided a major boost to Lee’s visibility, televising the entire WPBA tour that same year and more than doubling its billiards programming between 2002 and ’03, up to 260 airings in one year. She starred in a “This is SportsCenter” commercial, posed for the print arm’s Body Issue, worked the red carpet as a host at the ESPYs and finished third in a two-hour, made-for-TV special titled The World’s Sexiest Athletes. One year, according to her agent, Tom George, she shot pool at the company’s Christmas party in exchange for $2,000 and the networking opportunities.
But Lee also made it big through old-fashioned hustle, capitalizing on her talent, charisma and marketable look to build a following. “She never turned down an appearance,” says George. She cameoed on American Chopper and Arli$$ and inked sponsorship deals outside the world of billiards, with Rocawear and Bass Pro Shops. She taught pool fundamentals to soldiers on military bases, fired trick shots at corporate retreats and walloped pro athletes at the NFLPA’s Super Bowl party and at the NBA’s All-Star weekend. “They loved the idea of the Black Widow—someone really good, really sexy,” Lee says of her various employers. Plus the scratch was solid: In a 2008 Billiards Digest cover story, George estimated that his client was slated to earn some $800,000 that year, with only $25,000 coming from tournament winnings.
“I always felt like, no matter what happens in my life, I’d always have pool,” says Lee. “Worse comes to worst, I could do shows and exhibitions at $1,000 a pop.
More than any opponent, the biggest nemesis in Lee’s pool-playing career has always been her own physical pain. Around age 12 she had two 18-inch metal rods surgically implanted from her scalp to her spine to treat severe scoliosis. A half-dozen follow-up operations awaited in adulthood—some to remove rods, others to install new ones—leaving Lee in such agony that friends would often have to carry her out of whatever pool hall she was playing in as her back seized up.
In 2013, when Lee was enshrined in the WPBA Hall of Fame, her personal physician introduced her by showing blown-up X-rays of her back to a ballroom of awestruck contemporaries. But even that failed to capture the daily pain Lee endured from a med school textbook’s worth of ailments, including bursitis, pseudoarthrosis and ankylosing spondylitis. Then there were the panic attacks that came late in her career, brought on, she says, by the crowds that tailed her into restaurants, even public bathrooms, begging for autographs. “I’d have trouble breathing and find myself in a closet, hiding, or having this incredible urge to run out of there,” Lee says.
To make a little extra scratch, Lee often played against (and pummeled) pro athletes, like the Jets' Vinny Testaverde, in the early 2000s.
The optimism didn’t last. Soon after the fan fest, not long before COVID-19 hit the U.S., Lee developed an infection in her back, and then sepsis. Her surgical team insisted on taking out the stimulator. Lee protested through tears—“You can’t do it! I’m not going back!”—but was rebuffed.
Then, early in January, Lee woke up gasping for air. At first she wrote this off as her panic attacks resurfacing—but when the shortness of breath worsened Lee asked a friend to take her to a hospital, where X-rays revealed fluid buildup in the area between her lungs and her chest. Further tests confirmed: The fluid was filled with cancerous cells that had originated in either her uterus or ovaries and had metastasized to her abdomen, liver and peritoneum.
Radiation was ruled out—too much risk of damaging her bowels—but treatment couldn’t wait. And so, less than a week later, Lee trudged into the Tampa cancer center for her first dose of chemotherapy.
Whenever Lee slips, though, there’s always a web of helpers to catch her. Whether it’s a cousin, a childhood or pool-world acquaintance, or her own mother, Sonja, someone is always staying over to cook, clean, watch the kids and update the whiteboard in the entryway with Lee’s upcoming doctor’s appointments. Because Lee might otherwise forget, two of her godchildren put together a thick binder of tips (“rub steroid gel on painful areas”) and dietary advice (“has choked on frozen black grapes before”), plus three pages of pictures cataloging the various pills she must take each morning, afternoon and evening.
Back in mid May, on the day before her fifth chemo session, Lee sits down at her house and uncaps a Sharpie. A friend, the owner of a billiards hall in Tennessee and a breast cancer survivor herself, is hosting an upcoming fundraiser for Lee, and she has requested some Black Widow-logoed swag for auction. Lee signs sticks, balls, trading cards, posters and cloth face masks in practiced cursive, dotting each J with a heart.
All around, reminders of Lee’s career fill nearly every pocket of space. Crystal trophies line the tops of cupboards. A massive oil painting depicts her measuring a cue ball, preparing to strike. A Black Widow pinball machine idles in a corner, unplugged, near a box of Black Widow Billiards instructional DVDs. In the center of the room, a regulation-size pool table lies dormant beneath a tarp. Lee hasn’t played since her spinal cord stimulator was removed.
The killer-spider reputation runs counter to the real Lee, who started a college fund for her cousins and who for a while hosted free instructional boot camps for budding pool players at her home. At the annual APA world championships in Las Vegas, she is known to keep her booth open long past close, signing autographs and playing $20 challenge matches after midnight with fans.
And when Lee went public with the cancer, her people returned the love. On top of the private donations and benefits (like the APA- and Billiards Digest-hosted Night to Celebrate the Black Widow), a GoFundMe (created by George, her agent) amassed nearly $250,000 to cover her medical bills and build college funds for her daughters, including significant donations from NASCAR legend Tony Stewart and Heisman winner Reggie Bush, two old friends.
Wherever her journey takes her, she’s not alone. She connects with her 135,000 Facebook followers one 20-minute video at a time, talking about “Eating is impossible” and “Muddling through” and “Chemo #5! I’m ready for you.” She shares stories about her playing days and her cancer treatments, and in return she receives countless suggestions for miracle pills and magical foods she really ought to try.
Blessing. Around Lee, that word comes up a lot. Some of that is a product of her strong Christian faith. (Her oldest daughter, 17-year-old Cheyenne, was adopted at birth from a fellow member of her Korean church.) But she also sees survival as a matter of finding little blessings throughout each day. “In my mind, if I stay positive and active, I can will myself to live a little longer,” Lee says. “If this disease is telling me I’ll probably have less time than everyone else, I’d better make the most of it.
On this particular day, those blessings are of the simplest form: She drives to the post office to ship Black Widow memorabilia to the auction. She swings by the animal hospital to fetch medication for her three-pound toy chihuahua, Thor, who for a moment the vet feared had cancer too—but it was just a fungal infection. Later she lunches at Cracker Barrel with two friends and Cheyenne, housing a country-fried steak bathed in gravy and picking out kitschy gifts for her other daughters: lip gloss, a jigsaw puzzle and a powder that turns bath water into gooey slime. At night, eager to keep the good vibes going before chemo in the morning, she coaxes this reporter into visiting an escape