The homeless ex-wife of Baywatch star Jeremy Jackson is back on the streets after a dramatic intervention failed, DailyMailTV can reveal.
Former fitness model Loni Willison was photographed last week digging through trash cans in Hollywood, highlighting a terrible turn of fortune for the once stunning blonde.
After seeing our exclusive photos, DailyMailTV was contacted by a friend of Loni’s, former model Kristin Rossetti, who was desperate to find her and get her off the streets.
Our reporters were able to trace Loni fast asleep under a shopping cart on a busy stretch of Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood and took Kristin to see her.
And in an exclusive interview Loni told her heart-breaking story of how she went from being a magazine cover girl to being homeless on the streets of LA.
Her arms, legs, toes and fingernails were black with dirt, she had an open wound on her arm and a severe injury on her finger and needed urgent medical attention.
DailyMailTV captured the emotional reunion between Kristin and Loni and we took her to a hotel where she was able to eat a hot meal, shower and dress in clean clothes. Loni, 35, perked up and began to open up about her life’s journey.
Loni Willison, the ex-wife of former Baywatch actor Jeremy Jackson, is back on the streets after her friend staged a dramatic intervention for the former fitness model
DailyMailTV was able to trace Loni fast asleep under a shopping cart on a busy stretch of Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood and took her old friend Kristin Rossetti to see her
DailyMailTV captured the emotional reunion between Kristin and Loni (pictured left and right) and took her to a hotel where she was able to eat a hot meal, shower and dress in clean clothes
Willison split from her ex-husband Jeremy Jackson (pictured together) in 2014 following a stormy relationship, with the former alcoholic actor allegedly attempting to strangle Willison following a booze-fueled fight
After seeing our exclusive photos, DailyMailTV was contacted by Kristin, who was desperate to find Loni and get her off the streets. Kristin said she was ‘heartbroken’ by Loni’s way of living, saying: ‘It was unbelievable. I spent the night with her and it’s not the person I knew, the look on her face, there’s something completely missing’
Loni revealed she was evicted from her West Hollywood apartment two years ago after losing her job and suffering mental health issues.
She was working as an assistant at a cosmetic surgery center in LA but was fired and then worked for a realtor who, she says, refused to pay her.
Loni also convinced herself she was being tortured in her apartment with electricity, a mental health issue she still desperately needs help with today.
She couldn’t pay her rent or her car repayments and ended up on the streets with just the contents of a suitcase.
Shockingly, Loni said she hasn’t showered for a year – keeping herself as dirty as possible to prevent being assaulted or raped on the streets. She also revealed she is robbed regularly.
‘I lost two jobs and everything crumbled. It’s been two years, I’ve been on the streets since,’ Loni told DailyMailTV.
As the former model began to open up it became clear she is ravaged by an addiction to crystal meth and is in the throes of a mental illness.
She told tales of how her body was charged with electricity and how she felt she was a threat to people around her.
She spoke of how her electrical charge had brought down buildings and caused chaos in Hollywood – and the only thing that could stop it was her drug of choice.
Shockingly, Loni hasn’t showered for a year – keeping herself as dirty as possible to prevent being assaulted or raped on the streets. She also revealed she is robbed regularly
Loni said she was evicted from her West Hollywood apartment two years ago after losing her job and suffering mental health issues. As the former model began to open up it became clear she is ravaged by an addiction to crystal meth
Loni also convinced herself she was being tortured in her apartment with electricity, a mental health issue she still desperately needs help with today. Pictured: Kristin taking Loni to a hotel so she could shower and eat a hot meal
But while Loni seemed to embrace the generous offer of help and indicated she was ready to make a change in her life, something inside her pulled her away. After spending a night in a hotel room (pictured), she decided to flee. ‘I just want to get high,’ she told Kristin the following morning, saying: ‘I need to get high, no one is listening to me. I need to get out of here’
Loni (pictured holding Kristin’s son) spent a night at the hotel before fleeing the next morning to return to the streets
‘I was getting tortured in my home, my apartment,’ Loni explained. ‘I was living by myself but I was getting electrocuted.
‘It was really bad, really horrible. I later found a red mark on the back of my neck and I think that was how the electricity was getting into my head.
‘Things got worse and worse and worse and then I was kicked out.
‘Yes I do have a lot of friends, many many friends, and family, but everyone I talked to at the time seemed really strange.
‘I struggled to get across to them what I was talking about, even really simple things, so I just stopped talking to everybody.
‘It just wasn’t getting me anywhere and I was only getting more frustrated.
‘I haven’t had any contact with family or friends recently.’
Recalling her ex husband Jeremy – who was accused of trying to strangle her in a violent rage – she said: ‘I had a nice little apartment,’ she said.
‘I’d split from Jeremy at that time. I have not had any contact with him.
‘All the s**t that’s happened to me has been so f*****g crazy.
‘I once saw him outside my apartment when I was starting to get tortured.
‘I saw him, he was on the phone and then the next second he was invisible. He was literally gone. I was like, ”What the hell?”
Willison’s ex-husband Jeremy Jackson was snapped working out at Newport Beach days after photos of Loni emerged showing the former fitness model in a desolate state pushing her belongings around in a shopping cart
When asked if he was concerned about Willison, Jackson told DailyMail.com: ‘All I can tell you is that my attention, my time, my focus is where I can be most effective and we’re doing all right’
Jackson, who played Hobie Buchannon on Baywatch, split from Willison, 35, in 2014 following a stormy relationship
Willison spoke out against her ex husband in 2015 after Jackson was booted out of Celebrity Big Brother in the UK for exposing fellow housemate Chloe Goodman’s breast. Pictured: Photos of Loni that sparked Kristin to search for her
Loni, who was once on the cover of Australia’s Glam Fit magazine, added: ‘Is it hard on the streets? Yes and no.
‘LA is a wealthy place, people throw away a lot of stuff. It’s easy to find food. People give you food money. A 20 here, a 40 there. I just make it work.
‘There is so much available, there is no way someone can’t survive on the streets in a place like Los Angeles.’
As a woman, Loni says she has to make herself as filthy as possible to deter attackers.
‘I get robbed. I get robbed all the time. People take my stuff,’ she said.
‘Basically on the streets you’re around people who are doing anything just to get by and if they see something that you have that will help them they’re just going to take it.
‘It’s a survival of the fittest thing. I basically make myself as dirty as possible so that no one attacks me.
‘The dirtier I am the better. Smelly, too, but I’m not too smelly right now. If I do those two things, that seems to work.
‘I cut off my hair, too, to look different. I cut it myself. But I have been attacked, that’s bound to happen, too.’
Loni said she cut her arm after someone pushed her into some glass. The wound is taped up but looks in dire need of medical attention.
She added: ‘Yes, I do want to get off the street. I want a new life. I have been to rehab before but it didn’t work out for me.
‘I’ve got so much to figure out to get off the streets, I need some help.’
Kristin says she has been in touch with law enforcement to ask for their help in finding Loni again – but it could take weeks or months. She said: ‘Loni needs our help desperately, she needs to be off the streets and getting care. It makes me so sad, but you can’t force someone to accept your help, she needs to want to help herself’
Kristin said she was ‘heartbroken’ when she saw photos on DailyMail.com of Loni on the streets, adding: ‘There were some things she remembered but other things she drew a blank which made me sad, those were specific things, our inside jokes we’d always laugh about, but somehow she had forgotten. It was shocking, the craziest thing I’ve seen’
The 35-year-old is barely recognizable from her days as a model, unwashed and with her once long blonde locks chopped short
Loni, who was once on the cover of Australia’s Glam Fit, said: ‘Is it hard on the streets? Yes and no. LA is a wealthy place, people throw away a lot of stuff. It’s easy to find food. People give you food money. A 20 here, a 40 there. I just make it work’
As a woman, Loni says she has to make herself as filthy as possible to deter attackers, adding: ‘It’s a survival of the fittest thing. I basically make myself as dirty as possible so that no one attacks me. The dirtier I am the better. Smelly, too, but I’m not too smelly right now. If I do those two things, that seems to work’
Hearing Loni’s pleas DailyMailTV called upon the expertise of drug rehab specialist Larry Marinelli.
Larry co-founded True Hope Calling to help families in crisis of substance abuse and mental health.
He also owns True Intentions, a sober living home in Tarzana, California, that helps recovering addicts.
Larry is a close friend of Kristin’s, who dated his business partner Antonio Sabato Jr, the former General Hospital star turned politician, for ten years and they have a 16-year-old daughter together.
Larry, through his contacts and his own business, offered to help Loni for free.
He laid out a treatment plan for her having secured her a bed in Victory Detox Center in North Hollywood – a drug and alcohol residential rehabilitation facility.
After 30-60 days there, Larry offered Loni several months of intensive out patient treatment at his own business, True Intentions Sober Living in Tarzana.
In all Larry was offering a staggering $90,000 worth of treatment to get Loni clean.
But while Loni seemed to embrace the generous offer of help and indicated she was ready to make a change in her life, something inside her pulled her away.
After spending a night in a hotel room, she decided to flee.
‘I just want to get high,’ she told her friend Kristin the following morning. ‘I need to get high, no one is listening to me. I need to get out of here.’
Despite continued efforts to persuade her to accept the help, Loni took off and was last seen walking along Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills, pushing a shopping cart she had found.
Despite continued efforts to persuade her to accept the help, Loni took off and was last seen walking along Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills, pushing a shopping cart she had found
Loni said she cut her arm after someone pushed her into some glass. The wound is taped up but looks in dire need of medical attention. She said: ‘Yes I do want to get off the street. I want a new life. I have been to rehab before but it didn’t work out for me. I’ve got so much to figure out to get off the streets, I need some help’
Kristin shared several photos of her and Loni as glamorous models. ‘Loni, she was a Nike, Louis Vuitton, labels girl. She used to make a lot of money, she did fitness apps, fitness modeling, she was on the covers of magazines’
Kristin said: ‘We tried everything we could but just couldn’t get through to her.
‘I tried to tell her she’s not the only one this has happened to.
‘She had moments where she understood, but then she’d shake her head and said, ”no, nobody can fix this.”
‘Then she kept saying she wanted to get high, she said that was the only thing that grounds her and protects her from the electricity.
‘She got out of my car, grabbed all of her stuff and took off.
Hearing Loni’s pleas DailyMailTV called upon the expertise of drug rehab specialist Larry Marinelli to stage an intervention for the former model. He offered Loni $90,000 of free treatment to get Loni clean, but she fled for the streets again
‘We found her again minutes later and she had already found a shopping cart.
‘Larry tried to talk to her, but she refused to come back.’
For now Loni has vanished.
Back on the streets lost among LA County’s 58,000 homeless population.
Kristin says she has been in touch with law enforcement to ask for their help in finding Loni again – but it could take weeks or months.
‘Loni needs our help desperately, she needs to be off the streets and getting care.
‘It makes me so sad, but you can’t force someone to accept your help, she needs to want to help herself.’
Kristin said she was ‘heartbroken’ when she saw photos on DailyMail.com of Loni on the streets.
‘It was unbelievable, I’ve known her for so long and I know the kind of person she was. Clearly there’s a mental health issue there.
‘I spent the night with her and it’s not the person I knew, the look on her face, there’s something completely missing.
‘There were some things she remembered but other things she drew a blank which made me sad, those were specific things, our inside jokes we’d always laugh about, but somehow she had forgotten.
‘It was shocking, the craziest thing I’ve seen. She used to babysit my daughter.
‘But we’re not giving up, we’ll find her again and give it another try.’
Kristin shared several photos of her and Loni as glamorous models.
‘Loni, she was a Nike, Louis Vuitton, labels girl. She used to make a lot of money, she did fitness apps, fitness modeling, she was on the covers of magazines.’
For expert Larry, he sees Loni’s situation as ‘dire’.
‘I saw someone in a drug induced psychosis, she needs to get medicated and stabilized so she can start the process of recovery,’ he explains.
‘There’s laws in California that you can’t forcibly remove someone from the streets unless they’re saying they are going to harm themselves or harm others.
‘But if they want to live on the streets, there’s nothing you can do.’
He added: ‘I would hope that we can find her again and see if she’s ready to come in, she needs several months of care to see if she can start building a life again.’