tonight on "nightline," sell that car. there might be easy money sitting right in your garage. how one expert's simple tips helped this guy add $3,000 to the selling price of his used car. confessions of a centerfold. jenny mccarthy writes a surprising memoir about her journey from devout christian to sex symbol and playboy play mate. and wild thing. lions in the backyard, monkeys in the living room. we'll meet the team confronting extreme animal lovers whose exotic pets could be lurking in a neighborhood near you. >> announcer: from the global resources of abc news, with

terry moran, cynthia mcfadden and bill weir in new york city, this is "nightline," october 4th, 2012. >> good evening, i'm terry moran. well, tonight, there may be a secret cash cow parked in your driveway. because that old car may actually be worth thousands of dollars more than you think. when it comes to receiving your own car, some quick, easy, do it yourself tips could help you increase the price, and there's a lot more to it than just hanging up a gas station air freshener in there. abc's sharyn alfonsi brings us the best strategy for selling your old wheels. >> reporter: meet the gross family. brian, his wife lauren, dog layla and that's their baby, who often gets into the car through the trunk. doesn't take long to figure out why they need to sell their car. >> it's a disaster. >> reporter: so, if your wife wanted to get in here she would have to sit like this, right? she would have to be, like, in the fetal position. the blue book value for the car

is $9,000, but a local car dealer offered him four. he thinks it's worth more. so, brian is trying to sell it himself, putting up signs, listing it online at auto trader. two mant months later, zero ca. the car is in fair shape. and it's supposed to be a seller's market. so, we called autotrader.com and asked them to troubleshoot the gross' problem. they sent out brian moody, a sells expert who, with just a few simple changes, was able to help get the gross family an extra $3,000 for their car. moody explained there are basic things anyone can do to get a top price for their used car. key number one, clean it up. the coins, the traces of dog fur need to go. and lose the junk in the trunk. >> someone wants to picture their stuff there, not necessarily your old stuff. >> reporter: to that end, rethink your key chain. >> yeah, i would ditch that. >> reporter: life is about

reaching your designation but enjoying the trip. that sounds good. >> i picture this being a girl's car. >> reporter: and finally, take a whiff. have a woman, yes, a woman, smell your car. it turns out we have a better sense of smell. it's a little funky, but it's not awful. so, we get to work. hot rims. whoa. the car now sparkling, we focus on making the online ad pop. right away, brian notices problems with the five pictures posted. the steering wheel needs to be straightened out. the sunroof closed. and all these other cars are distracting. it needs to look like a new car ad. so, we take new pictures outside, near a park, on a cloudy day so the light is even. but there's one more big hurdle. >> if you want a sharp looking car that handling great -- >> reporter: the ad. you're really excited about selling this car. brian says lose the exclamation points, the all caps and instead offer details about the car.

and brian says that misspelling can cost you money. why does that matter? fwl they want to think you're taking as much care of your ad as you do the car. >> reporter: and then, the price. everybody thinks s ill i'll pr it high. while the blue book value is a good national average, but the indicator is what similar cars are selling for in your area. so, price it right. while we wait for buyers to bite, we bring in nicole markson, an automotive insider to teach brian how to show the car. she says individual sellers actually have a huge advantage over car salesmen. >> you have to remember, people are afraid to go to a car dealership. you want to make them feel warm and comfortable with you. if somebody doesn't like you, they're not going to buy from you. >> reporter: if a couple is looking, remember, 85% of big

purchases are ultimately made by the woman. and, she says, most importantly, have them drive the car before you ever talk about price. >> what you want to do is have them driving, really loving it and then having that discussion after. >> reporter: but is all this really enough? the gross family is desperate for a bigger car. days later, the new ad is being viewed twice as many times. and finally, an offer online. $7,000. $3,000 higher than the first offer. >> we're very hopeful we're going to sell the car really soon. >> reporter: i'm sharyn alfonsi for "nightline" in burlington, new jersey. >> american capitalism at work there. just ahead, well, from ultra christian beginnings to bearing it all for playboy. jenny mccarthy tells all about her new memoir. when we got married. i had three kids. and she became the full time mother of three. it was soccer, and ballet, and cheerleading, and baseball.

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>> announcer: "nightline" continues from new york city with terry moran. >> the path from devoult christian schoolgirl to playboy centerfold is bound to be a complicated one full of twists and turns. for jenny mccarthy, it's been a ride worthy of a brand new memoir, where she comes clean about her religious roots. she took abc's juju chang back to the house where she grew up in for a trip down memory lane. >> oh, my god. this is so sweet. it's so sweet to look back. >> reporter: it's here, driving down the streets of chicago's south side -- >> i grew up on the second house to the right and my basketball hoop is still up in the backyard. oh, my god. everything looks smaller. >> reporter: jenny mccarthy's path ill lum nates who she's become. >> the basement is where satan lived. >> reporter: we showed up

unannounced. >> hig, how are you? i used to live here. >> yes, i do know. >> you do know that? and this is "nightline." i hope you don't mind. >> reporter: going with mccarthy to her childhood home takes her bam to her humble roots. she grew up very fast in the public eye as a sexy pinup girl. but in her bedroom, she was deeply religious. >> we used to lay are rosaries and statues all over our body because we thought that would protect us from satan. and when we fell asleep, i would steal them off her to me. i used to have a jesus poster, the pope was over there. flaming heart of jesus was over there. and then i had some "i love jesus" t-shirts and bags hanging up. >> reporter: truly, jesus was your bieber. >> he was my bieber, all right. he still is. you know, jesus. >> reporter: she became a household name, co-hosting "singled out" in the '90s.

but has kept her claim to fame these dames as a six-time "new york times" best-selling author. her latest is all about her childhood, growing up poor. >> we really were hungry a lot of the nights. >> reporter: and quite pius. >> this is the church i went to twice a week. >> reporter: both left a deep mark on mccarthy. your whole life has been about fear. fear of going to hell or fear of poverty. >> yeah, it has made me work harder and i think everybody needs motivation. i used to put on talk shows. and this was my audience. i would have the chairs lined up like this. >> reporter: she has always been driven and especially these days, as a single mom to her 10-year-old son, evan. >> i wouldn't be nearly as driven if i wasn't a single mother. if i had somebody to depend on financially, i might slow it down a bit, but no. i am a workhorse. >> reporter: you really are. >> i am. >> reporter: you have so much going on. >> thank god, yeah. god. >> reporter: yeah.

>> sinners can have a place in this world. >> reporter: but despite her religious upbringing, mccarthy was a rebel. she worked for a grocery store for five years and it was here -- >> they moved the register! >> reporter: that she figured out her way out was to pose for playboy. >> guys would come in to buy them, they would ask for them, i pick it up, throw it at them. that gave me the idea. these chicks can do this. why couldn't i? >> reporter: and she did. just 21 years old. eventually, she was named playmate of the year. >> when hef said, you're pl playmate of the year, i went, oh, my god, yes. and then, oh, my god, no. i cried for an hour that i was playmate of the year because i thought, now that really -- that really ensured my entry into hell. >> reporter: extreme little devout christians who straddled multiple jobs to send their four daughters to catholic school, her parents were distraught. >> my mom was the one that was like, i don't -- i only have

three daughters now. that's like -- cuts. >> reporter: ouch. >> and i cried and i was like, i begged her, i was like, listen. you raised me to be a good person. this was my only option. i will be a playmate that does something great, mom, trust me. stand by me. >> reporter: and they did. when mccarthy got that $100,000 check for being playmate of the year, she gave the money to her parents and moved them to the suburbs. >> to them, you know, i could see what bittersweet feels like. they cried. they were happy and sad, all at the same time because they didn't envision the daughter having to do that to help them out. you know? >> reporter: she moved to hollywood and grew disillusioned with her faith but used it when touring as playmate of the year. >> guys would be like, so, you know, what are you doing after this, you're so beautiful. i think that, you know, we have this connection that we should maybe walk on the beach later. and i would go, well, as long as

we can also bring jesus, my savior. >> reporter: still, she admits that she was broen to using men to get through difficult periods of her life. did you use men as a drug? >> i would say yes. but not sexually. i would use them as distraction for my own life. for instance, when evan was diagnosed with autism, i quickly got into a relationship, just to distract from the pain that i was going through, so i got in a relationship with jim carrey at the time and really allowed my mind to get caught up in, you know -- >> reporter: the romance. >> the romance, to numb, to numb really what i was going through. >> reporter: she turns 40 next month and after a long-term relationship with carrey and recently are brian urlacher, mccarthy is single again. she still doesn't believe in god, but that doesn't mean she's given up on her wild side.

you constantly break this sexy girl stereotype by being smart and savvy and then you go and pose for playboy again. >> crazy. >> reporter: what's up with that? >> stereotyping is the biggest mistake you can ever do on anybody. i am an amazing mother. i am an amazing, i think, author and workhorse. and i'm also an amazing, like, fun, want to be sexy kind of girl. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm juju chang in chicago. >> the amazing jenny mccarthy. thanks to juju for that. next up, lions and tiger and monkeys, oh, my. we meet the team confronting out of control pet owners whose predators would be lurking in your neck of theed woos. [ male announcer ] you like who you are... and you learned something along the way.

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now, for most people, a backyard animal encounter means a run-in with a squirrel. but a small animal obsessed slice of the population has excited exotic beasts like tigers and lions to roam the domestic territory typically reserved for cats and dogs. and when they get out of hand, there's one team that swoops in. here's abc's t.j. winick. >> reporter: they aren't zoo keepers. they're pet owners. >> she never attacked me. >> because i'm her friend. i think it's -- >> reporter: blinded by love and devotion to their furry friends. >> ah! >> reporter: meet alison eastwood and donald schultz. two animal interventionists who try to tame out of control exotic animal lovers. >> instead of going in and pointing fingers, saying, what you're doing is wrong, we hold up a mir ron and let them see what their doing and that is often all it takes to push them over the edge. >> reporter: exotic and

sometimes dangerous animals like these could be living next door to you. tigers, monkeys and reptiles have increasingly found a home in suburban america. last year, the danger was real for the city of zanesville, ohio, when the owner of this exotic animal farm killed himself, but not before opening the cages. >> scary. they're going to be running wild. >> reporter: the result? a bloody safari on these midwestern city streets. incredibly, no one was injured. angela harter and her husband david have their own exotic animal sanctuary called rescue one. right in their backyard. >> there's 15, 17 tigers. there's a dozenr 15 lions. eight or nine cougars here. we have a black bear. >> reporter: angela figures they go through about 200 to 300 pounds of meat a day. the cages are repaired and patched up with scrap metal. this couple is clearly

overwhelmed. and angela expresses feelings of guilt. >> i have to do the right thing. i'm not going to live with myself knowing i backed out and left these animals in that shape because i couldn't take it anymore. >> people go into it with the best intentions. they want to start a rescue, a little zoo for school kids, anything like that. and before they know it, they actually become what they're trying to save the animals from. >> reporter: eastwood and schultz try to convince angela to try to give up some of the animals. >> what if a rescue called right now, what if someone said, there's a tiger or a lion or a cat, is this just going to keep going? >> i don't know how to answer that. >> well, yes or no? >> there's so many aspects to look at this. >> reporter: predictably, she's reluctant. >> they understand -- they look at us, you know what i mean? i bet they'd say no. these are brothers. these guys love each other. they have their own lives out in that cage. >> reporter: for some owners,

it's like asking them to give up their own children. >> it doesn't matter if it's been born or raised in captivity. it's still a wild animal. and it's still capable of really hurting people. >> reporter: often, these pet owners do come around, even if it's not on camera. david and angela recently closed down rescue one and found new homes for their former tenants. >> they think this animal is never going to harm them, because they've had it all their life. which is a total misconception. >> reporter: and animal interceptions help both the animal and their owner. for "nightline," i'm t.j. winick in new york. >> "animal intervention" airs tuesday nights on nat geo wild. thank you for watching abc news. we hope you check in for "good morning america." one of the first times they're revealing the identity of the iowa couple that won $202 million in the power ball. we're always online at abcnews.com. jimmmm