There’s a cheerleading joke to be made here but I can’t quite find it. If you have a suggestion for one, let me hear it! — Dan

On September 2, 2008, a shy, blonde transfer student walked into Ashwaubenon High School in Green Bay, Wisconsin. She wore a pink hoodie, carried a school bag decorated with hearts, and seemed nervous about starting at a new school. One high school employee would later say that the girl seemed very timid, cried when talking about moving from her previous school in Nevada, and admitted she wasn't good at math. But despite her apprehensions, the student was determined to start her career at her new school right — by making the cheerleading squad.

She succeed. Before classes even started, she attended cheerleading practices, received a cheerleader's locker, and went to a pool party at the cheerleading coach's house. She wrote a check for $134.50 to pay for her uniform. Everything seemed to be going according to plan.

But she never stepped on the field to cheer on the Ashwaubenon football team. Because by the time she did, the woman in question was wearing a different type of uniform: a prison jumpsuit.

Just sixteen days after she first walked through those doors, as the Los Angeles Times reported, she was standing in court wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and shackles, charged with identity theft. The timid transfer student wasn't a 15-year-old sophomore at all. Her name was Wendy Brown, she was 33 years old, and she had stolen her own daughter's identity to relive the high school experience she never had.

According to the criminal complaint, Brown enrolled using her 15-year-old daughter's birth certificate and social security number. Her actual daughter was living in Nevada with Brown's mother at the time — the real student, whose name went unreported, never moved to Wisconsin at all. And it’s unclear why Brown moved without her. But she did, and when she came to Wisconsin, she had one goal in mind. As the Spokesman-Review reported, Brown told authorities she wanted to get her high school diploma and become a cheerleader "because she didn't have a childhood and wanted to regain a part of her life that she'd missed."

But taking a teenager’s identity proved harder than she expected. Teachers and administrators alike — who had decades of experience getting to know teenagers — quickly began to question if this new student was actually also a teenager. A school liaison officer started investigating after Brown attended only one day of actual classes, and the assistant principal contacted her “old” school (and, not-so-coincidentally, her daughter's real school) in Nevada. That’s when he discovered the student who claimed to be on the cheerleading squad at Ashwaubenon was still enrolled in Nevada. Brown’s mother, still in Nevada with the Brown’s daughter, confirmed the deception and told the school that Brown had a history of identity theft crimes.

Brown's motivations went deeper than simple fraud. Years later, she explained to The Atlantic that she had been bullied in high school, had a speech impediment, and came from an abusive home. Running track was her only escape. But at 16, she became pregnant, dropped out of school, and watched her younger sister become everything she had wanted to be — including a cheerleader. "I was always jealous of them," Brown said of the cheerleaders at her old school. "It just seemed that they had a great life." When she moved to Green Bay with her husband in 2008 and found herself living close enough to Ashwaubenon High School to hear the coach's whistle at practice, something snapped.

The case took an unusual legal turn. Brown was ultimately found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, as ABC7 reported. A psychiatrist who examined her diagnosed her with bipolar II disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and multiple personality disorders, concluding that her "fantasy of finishing high school and becoming a cheerleader became a delusion." Instead of prison, she was committed to a mental health facility for treatment. And after all, there was limited harm from her transgression. But there was some harm — her $134.50 check for her uniform bounced.

As “Jerry Gogosian,” Hilde Lynn Helphenstein found fame skewering the industry online. But after making her, the Internet destroyed her

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Today’s Bonus fact: Go to a high school or college sporting event and you’ll notice that there typically aren’t a lot of male cheerleaders. But maybe young men should be encouraged to join the squad, because it’s apparently a stepping stone to the White House. As cheerleading website Varsity Spirit notes, four former U.S. Presidents — FDR, Dwight Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush — were all part of their college cheerleading team.

From the Archives: Walk This Way: Is synchronized walking a form of cheerleading? You be the judge.

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And thanks! — Dan