Matt York / AP file

Tammie Miller talks about her former life as a "Circut Girl," or traveling escort. “Circuit Girls” are expected to flock to Phoenix for Super Bowl XLII, where they may pick up clients in hotel lobbies or in front of stadiums.

“I was addicted to the adrenaline I got from it,” she said. “The adrenaline of getting in and out of cars. The adrenaline of being one step ahead of the cops. The adrenaline of, ‘How much money can I make tonight?’”

Miller laughs now when she thinks what she used to be. A black embroidered cardigan and turtle neck have replaced the street clothes. She’s removed her pimp’s initials — gold letters “M” and “V” — from her front teeth. People used to call her “Miss Envy.”

“A lot of my life is really fuzzy to me because of all the drugs I was doing,” she said. “But of course it changed me.”

Miller became a traveling circuit girl in her early 20s, after a pimp kidnapped her while she was working the streets of west Phoenix. The pimp — his name is Vinnie — stopped the car in Long Beach and told her to “get to work” as one of his 13 girls.

“He had a different girl for different things,” Miller said. “Like one would travel. If there was a trick that came from out of state and he’d call and he’d want her to come see him, (Vinnie) would fly that person out.”

Some of Vinnie’s girls would just walk along the highway.

“And me ... I was what he called his ‘bottom,’ which meant I was his top girl,” she explained. “I bathed him; I clothed him. Everything.”

Every summer, Miller said, Vinnie planned their circuit. Miller would pick one of the top earners from Vinnie’s girls, and the three would hit the road. There would be stops in Fresno, Calif., and in Las Vegas. They’d arrive at the Super Bowl city three days before the game.

At times, Miller said, she felt rich. She gave all her money to Vinnie, but he bought her things. She had a Mercedes and wore fancy clothes. She lived in a beach house.

“That was like an incentive for us to stay,” he said. “Oh, we get all these nice clothes. We get these nice things.”

But as she got older, Miller said she prayed to get out of the business. She had four children, and she was tired of turning tricks. But her pimp wouldn’t let her leave. He beat her with coat hangers and shoes.

Miller said it wasn’t until police arrested her a few years ago that she mustered the strength to get away. She thought Vinnie loved her, but he left her in jail for two months.

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That was when Miller said she found the DIGNITY House, a Phoenix-based rehabilitation program founded by a former prostitute and run by Catholic Charities in Arizona. The agency helped her find a job and put her up in a house.

With DIGNITY, Miller said she found her salvation. After two years, she is so free from the lifestyle that she hardly remembers the street words she used to sling back and forth with other hookers.

When she bumped into her pimp recently at a gas station, she did what she never could do before: She stood her ground.

“He came up and tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Hey, I’m going to California. Are you ready?’ And I said ‘You know what, look, I’m not the person I used to be. I’m getting married, I don’t need you.”’