BEFORE he became a pro football star, “Dancing with the Stars” competitor DONALD DRIVER was a drug dealer and car thief.
The Green Bay Packers’ pass-catching great, 37, and his older brother Marvin dealt drugs and stole cars on the mean streets of Houston as a way to help their impoverished mom and sisters survive.
“Donald could easily have ended up dead or in jail,” an insider told The ENQUIRER.
The football legend was often homeless as a teen, after a collection agency had confiscated the family’s possessions. He and his siblings sometimes lived with his mother, Faye Gray, in a U-Haul trailer when she couldn’t afford a hotel room.
There were times when the family subsisted on mayonnaise sandwiches, or just starved.
So, Donald says he and his brother Marvin resorted to stealing cars and dealing drugs to make ends meet.
“You try to do anything you can to provide for your family,” Driver told a reporter. “I sold (drugs) for a long, long time.”
After he was robbed and nearly killed, however, Donald and Marvin, with the help of his grandmother, Betty Lofton, turned their lives around. Marvin’s a lieutenant at a correction facility now. Donald’s athletic talent gave him a new direction in life.
He became an all-conference athlete in football and track at Alcorn State, where he met wife Betina. Ironically, she was a criminal justice major and he was still running around with a tough crowd.
He said: “When I met my wife, Betina, she said, ‘God is testing you. And if you want to be with me, you have to stop.’ That was my turning point.”
