For brothers, names don't decide destiny

NEW YORK -- One son was named Loser, the other Winner.

One became a cop and eventually was promoted to detective -- shield number 2762.

The other fell into the life of a small-time crook, racking up at least 31 arrests before being sent away for a two-year stretch in state prison -- inmate number 00R2807.

But for the brothers Lane, it wasn't a case of their unique names sealing their fates.

"I went a totally separate route right from the start," said Loser Lane, 41, a detective working in the 40th Precinct in the South Bronx.

Loser, a star student and athlete, went on scholarship to an elite prep school and to Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. Then he joined the force because "my mom really wanted me to do this."

Winner's life has gone the other way. Now 44, Winner got out of jail last month after spending two years in the Southport Correctional Facility in Pine City, outside Elmira, for breaking into a car. He's living in a homeless shelter upstate, shuttling back and forth between the camp and the city trying to get his life on track.

Why did he commit so many crimes? "It's just some situations I got in," Winner said. "It wasn't really for the need."

"Most of the crimes are minor crimes," Loser said of Winner. The brothers rarely see each other now.

The Lane boys ran in the same circles while growing up in Harlem's Wagner Projects. Their names never seemed to arouse even curiosity, much less ridicule, from the kids in the neighborhood.

It helped that Loser was the youngest of eight brothers and sisters. It also helped that he was a natural athlete, admired by the other kids for his on-field achievements.

The story of how Loser got his name is simple. On the day he was born, their late father asked his daughter Dinelda what to name the new baby.

"She said, Well, we've got a Winner, why don't we have a Loser?' And there you go. That was it." Winner said he's not sure how he got his name. He thinks his name "had to have something to do with baseball, but I'm not sure what."

While Loser's friends and classmates had no problem calling him by his real name, his coaches, teachers and other adults "just couldn't bring themselves to call me Loser."

"It's weird because people don't like saying the name," he said.

"They won't believe it -- you have to tell people seven, eight times, especially in the profession I'm in. You get, 'Is it spelled the way you pronounce it? No, it can't be.' They throw a French twist on it, Losier. At some point you get tired and you say whatever name you want to do, do it." Winner has never had a nickname, Loser said. "When your name is Winner, that's it. You don't need a nickname."

After learning Loser's name, some people find out that his older brother's name is Winner.

But few people know that the Lane brothers' lives -- one a cop, one an ex-con -- are as opposite as their names.

"They stop at, 'oh, you've got a brother named Winner, ha, ha' and that's it. People don't know the rest of the story."