Mary Carol Reilly refused to drop her drawers in a room full of men. Even at gunpoint. &ldquo;I thought, &lsquo;This is it, I will just have to die right here,&rsquo;&rdquo; the 77-year-old former nun, one-time Romper Room teacher, ex-actress, ex-cabbie, and still-serious poker player recalls with a chuckle and blue-eyed twinkle. Armed robbers had busted into the illegal back room poker game in Greektown where she had a seat at one of the tables&mdash;the only woman in the joint&mdash;and told everyone to stand, face the wall, and pull their pants down to their ankles. &ldquo;They broke in yelling, &lsquo;MF er this, MFer that&rsquo; and pistol-whipped one guy because he couldn&rsquo;t open the safe. The man next to me shook like a leaf.&rdquo; Known in local poker lore as &ldquo;The Hold&rsquo;em, Hold up,&rdquo; the 2006 stick-up gained real notoriety because of what happened next. A player who had stepped out moments before to call his girlfriend heard the commotion and flagged down a patrol car. Police broke up the heist and recovered almost $24,000. Such games, often moving site to site, were more common before the Horseshoe Casino opened, Reilly notes. How a former Catholic postulant, who became Chicago TV&rsquo;s Romper Room teacher in 1967&mdash;and later acted in national commercials with Jodie Foster and the Pillsbury Doughboy&mdash;ended up in Greektown is a circuitous story. Other highlights from her Zelig-like journey: Reilly was in the courtroom gallery during the Manson trial and nearly got tossed out after she began sobbing when the details of Sharon Tate&rsquo;s death were presented. She landed a bit part in the groundbreaking &rsquo;70s series All in the Family&mdash;from which she still receives occasional 17-cent royalty checks&mdash;drove a cab in Hollywood, hosted a talk show on WJZ (Phil Donahue was once a guest), volunteered in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and taught English in China. In between, she taught literature to Archdiocese of Baltimore middle schoolers for 25 years.&ldquo;If you want to understand my life,&rdquo; she volunteers before, yes, a lively poker game including several political types at a secret backroom location in Southeast Baltimore, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ve got to understand I was always running away from three things&mdash;my mother, the Catholic Church, and Baltimore.&rdquo; But always running back, too.Reilly grew up in a multigenerational household near Pimlico (sneaking in to pet the horses as a girl), the daughter of a depressive alcoholic father, who ran the family&rsquo;s downtown leather shop, and an overworked, neurotic, devout, loving, and kind mother. After attending the all-girls Seton High, Reilly started at what is now Frostburg University&mdash;&ldquo;far away as I could get&rdquo;&mdash; before quitting to join the Sisters of Saints Cyril and Methodius. &ldquo;A girl I had a crush on left school to get married, and that had broken my heart,&rdquo; recalls Reilly, who was still coming to terms with her sexuality.However, after learning of her parents&rsquo; mental health issues (her father had undergone electroshock therapy), the convent asked her to leave. A few years later, her beloved younger brother&rsquo;s suicide sent her into a alcoholic tailspin. She&rsquo;s been sober 44 years.Reilly finally told her mother she was gay in the early 1970s (by then, Reilly was sharing an apartment in New York with a prominent women&rsquo;s rights leader). She and her mother were driving to mass at St. Patrick&rsquo;s. Initially, her mother appeared more flummoxed than shocked or angry. &ldquo;We were in the car, just me and her, and I&rsquo;ll never forget it, she said, &lsquo;What do you do?&rsquo; I said, &lsquo;Mother! I don&rsquo;t ask what you and Daddy do.&rsquo; We didn&rsquo;t talk the rest of the way. Then, as we were walking up the steps to St. Patrick&rsquo;s, she slipped her arm underneath my arm. Said more than any words.&rdquo;The poker, she explains, is social and competitive, which she likes. It&rsquo;s also soothing&mdash; keeping her mind on the game and people around her. She&rsquo;s competed twice in World Series of Poker tournaments in Las Vegas, never winning, nor losing, outrageous money. At Delaware Park, she&rsquo;s known as &ldquo;Sister Mary,&rdquo; which she doesn&rsquo;t mind. On occasion, she&rsquo;ll hear, &ldquo;Nice hand, Granny,&rdquo; which she does. &ldquo;I told one guy &lsquo;F - - - you,&rsquo; and they threw me out.&rdquo;

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