She had Money, Fame and Beauty, but after coming this close to overdosing on drugs, this Buffalo girl had to do some serious thinking. Today, she's a success story in every sense of the word. Rusty Restless reports...

She's a bit intimidating at first; 5'11" in her stocking feet, model-thin, super toned and a bit reserved. But that's just Jessica White, Mega-model/Glamazon/African-American woman with an impressive list of "firsts" in her still-new career being professional.

She flew in from her home in Buffalo and she's here at Restless Style today to do her job. Which is to look beautiful.

Actually, it's more than that. Jessica White's job at this moment is to look beautiful in a Chloe outfit and five-inch Louboutin heels. Easy enough, especially when you've got two of the best hair and makeup artists attending to you, a great photographer, a roomful of lighting experts, someone to work a wind machine and RS' own George Kotsiopolous taking care of business.

Now, pretend it's you being asked to get in front of the camera so we can check focus and lighting: It looks, well, beautiful! Okay, now jump. Yes, you heard us. Jump. As in, up in the air. In five-inch heels. Now, do it again. And again. And again. And look like you're having fun doing it while the camera whirs, taking picture after picture. Don't forget to smile...

All of which Ms. White does. Again and again. Smiling as if she'd never had this much fun before in her entire life. And showing us again and again that to be a really great model, it's not enough to just be pretty, you have to be willing and able to do what it takes to get a great picture. Whether it's spending hours on a beach having your body painted and spending hours more covered with that sticky bodypaint (she's done that) or lying in a bikini on a giant pile of rocks for hours (she's done that) or jumping up and down in four-inch heels (she's doing that now) Jessica White has done it. And she does it without complaining, with a smile on her face.

That ability to be, first and foremost, professional, coupled with her astonishing beauty, is why she's the first African-American model to land three consecutive bookings in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue (it would be six, but she missed the 2006 issue for reasons we'll get into later). She's also the first African-American model to land two cosmetic contracts (Covergirl and Maybelline). Along with fashion spreads in Teen Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Surface, she's walked the runway shows in Milan, Paris, and New York, had a bit part in "Big Momma's House 2" (as a bra model) and appeared in videos for John Legend and Jay-Z as well as the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.

Sounds great, doesn't it? She'll tell you it wasn't always like this. Yes, she was professional and yes, she loved modeling. She just loved drugs more.

She grew up in a tough part of Buffalo, New York and she says her mother did a good job. "I had a good upbringing, but I made some bad decisions. I started drinking at a very young age." She also started hanging with some very thuggy people.

At 14, she enrolled in Personal Best modeling school in her hometown. She was discovered at 16 by a New York City talent scout and in short order she was on her way to Paris, which is like boot camp for young models. Her success was almost instantaneous. She started doing runway shows for the top designers, booked a Chloe campaign and more print work. At the time, it looked like the gorgeous black girl from Buffalo was on her way to the bigtime.

There was just one problem. Jessica's partying was getting way out of hand. "By 18, it was bad, and I didn't want to stop." She was making serious money, too, and hobnobbing with a rich, famous, fast crowd which only made it easier. She found cocaine. And what she says next is something you hear every drug addict say if they're lucky enough to get clean.

"I thought I could control it. I liked it. I could function on it. I could work."

Until she couldn't. And that's the reason Jessica isn't in the 2006 edition of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue. "I o.d.'ed," she explains. "And I was supposed to be in Houston hosting this big Sports Illustrated party and I missed it and I got fired. It was the first time I ever got fired."

"It was the best thing that could have happened," she says now. "I realized it was 'do or die'. I overdosed on a combination of drugs and I wasn't trying to die, but I'm 119 lbs and I've read stories where people have died from everything I was on and it should have killed me. I'm really, truly blessed."

She took six months off to get herself together and reconnected with her family. She went home to Buffalo and went back to church ."I spend a lot of time in church," she laughs.

When a model screws up the way Jessica did, there is a lot of money involved - before a big shoot can happen, there are days, more often weeks, of planning as schedules are juggled and a crew is put together. There are location fees, hair and makeup artists' fees, photographer's fees, assistants' fees, airplane tickets, hotel bills, catering - and if the model falls out at the last minute, all that money and time goes down the drain.

The second time around, Jessica White had to fight for what was given her the first time. "Everyone said it was over," she says. "Because of what happened with Sports Illustrated, I had to work to get them back."

She decided to be honest. "I was real with people. I told them the truth." It was a gamble, but she figured some of her employers may have battled drug problems of their own, or been involved with someone who had and that they would understand if she did her part in being honest and then followed through by being professional and dependable. "It may be fashion, but people are human and they have their own lives just like anyone else."

She won Sports Illustrated back (she'll be doing 2009 as well) and her career is hotter than ever, but her work was far from over. Part of getting clean is learning not to use a day at a time and part of staying clean is doing the work to find out why you used in the first place.

What she figured out was as shocking as it should have been obvious. "I was sexually molested. There were things I forgot and one day, I was sitting down, staring out the window and I re-lived it."

With that, she started to grasp the enormity of that injury. "I blocked it out and tried to forget about it. I became a really closed, inward person and I wouldn't talk about anything. Modeling got me out of it, and then, I would come home and it would be in my face. It wasn't just a onetime thing; it was continual. It really changed the course of my emotions."

Her new, "glamorous" life, she realized later, had escalated her issues. "I was lonely and I had left my family and everything I knew. Part of my problem was hanging with the wrong crew, but I was into it. I was tired of being a good girl. It was pain built on top of pain," she observes.

"I got to the point where I hated being beautiful. I thought maybe if I wasn't, what happened wouldn't have happened to me." She knows better now. "Here, in America, every two minutes some young girl is being molested or raped" and it's doubtful every one of them is a budding Victoria's Secret model.

"You start to question yourself. It went very deep. I hated men. I would date guys and dog them because I hated them. It took me awhile to realize that it wasn't all men, it was one person who victimized me. And I had to go through my healing. It took me years to be able to talk about it."

Now, she almost can't stop talking about it. "After I started talking about it, now, everyone's interested. It's like 'tell me more,'" she observes. "We can't stop every girl from being molested or raped, but we can raise awareness."

As part of that mission, she mentors young girls and she's put together a foundation, Angel's Wings, to help women in crisis. "Right now, I'm putting a board together. We're building a house in a secret, secure location where women can get back on their feet and once we get this one up and running, we're going into Philadelphia and New York City."

She's been sober three years and she sees her life in Buffalo as the best of both worlds. "Normality is the reason I moved back to Buffalo," she explains. "One moment, I'm doing what I love to do and the next, I'm home here with my dogs and my family and the barbeque. It can't get any better than this." Probably not.

Sidebar: THE LOVELINKS OF JESSICA WHITE According to the Internet, Ms. White has been very busy romantically - true or false? RS wanted the scoop on each.

RIGHT NOW: "I'm not dating anybody now. Because there's nobody that I'm really interested. I've cleaned house on every aspect of my life, and I'm not going to screw up by dating the wrong guy. I do have a crush on someone - he knows."

J. HOLIDAY - "Never dated him. We had one blind date. Mutual friends set us up, an hour and half later, there are paparazzi everywhere. That's the first and last time I've seen him."

JOHN LEGEND - "I dated John. He's a great guy. We were young and we had a lot of fun."

KERRY RHODES - "No! Kerry and I were friends! I never dated him! We hung out. To be honest, I was in love with one particular guy during the time I was supposedly dating all these guys."

FIFTY CENT - "No, I never dated Fifty. We met at an event, we took pictures at an event."

USHER - (Giggles) "Such a long time ago. We hung out. Next Question."

VIN DIESEL - "I don't even know the guy! That's so funny! When did I meet him? That's funny!" (caveat: More than once, when one eligible celebrity claims never to have met another eligible celebrity they've been romantically linked with, it's a very good sign they're romantically linked. We don't know, we're just sayin'.)

PARTING SHOT - "Some of the guys on this list I've never dated and the one guy I was in love with isn't even on here."

Check out Jessica's Photo Shoot