Victoria Hellstrom was born in Chicago, Illinois, to fashion designer Sylvia Cooke-Hellstrom and music store owner William Hellstrom. Because Sylvia was a Cooke and related to Dimitri Cooke’s father, this made Victoria a cousin to one of the weirdest musical families ever growing up. Having no brothers and sisters, Vicki found herself growing close to her cousins Dimitri, Thomas and even Chris when he was born. Closer in age to Dimitri than to any of the other cousins, the two became inseparable, instant best friends and it seemed that they were going to be troublemakers for the rest of their lives. As Dimitri was teaching himself guitar and recording strange demos in his basement with his brother Thomas and best friend Dayton Stroud, Vicki found herself in her father’s local music store, taking violin and vocal lessons. Often, the Cooke-Hellstrom gang would get together for family jam sessions, if there was a family that was musical enough to come close to the Partridge Family, it was this clan. The family had amazing values, and they all seemed to care about each other enough to help each other along in their careers. Victoria’s life was a nice one. And she had nice friends and family to get along with her as well.

Not to say that she hadn’t made mistakes in the past. Once graduated from college with a major in business and minoring in music, moved out to New York and was uncertain what business she wanted to open, she was introduced by a close friend to Thomas LeBlanc, a rich oil heir, gorgeous and quite the staple and various clubs in the New York area. As her friend kept partying and begging Victoria to come out, she soon found that she was getting pulled into the night life, drinking and partying and soon starting a high profile relationship with Thomas. While Victoria was trying to get herself taken seriously as a musician, working closely with her cousin and his friends, Thomas would be photographed hitting on other women, one of them being her friend that introduced at a point.

Pretty soon, Vicki found herself falling in love with the rich oil heir, much to her disappointment and to her parents delight. Eventually Thomas proposed, despite the rumors that he was sleeping with various other women, and Vicki said yes. Yes to a world that she wasn’t even really ready for. Finally fed up with being treated like shit, the relationship ended fast, as did the engagement. Thomas moved on to the girl that introduced him and Vicki and both were married at 23. Victoria moved on, and was introduced to Dimitri’s best friend, Dayton. He was funny, amusing, and kept Victoria’s spirits up, which was something that most guys couldn’t do in those days.

Needless to say, she was married early to Dayton Stroud, which certainly made for strange bedfellows, and also needless to say it didn’t work out. Neither of them was in the right place, because as much as Victoria wanted to believe she was in love, she wasn’t. She was in love with the idea of being in love, which in their case was completely different than what she was looking for. Of course the relationship between Dayton and Vicki has been strained slightly, but its human nature to make mistakes, and it’s even more of human nature to try your best to ignore these mistakes. We’ve all been at fault one time or another, and well, while Victoria doesn’t regret the marriage, she doesn’t remember it with fondness either. She had been known to jump into relationships with people too fast, and hasn’t really been in a long term relationship since Dayton, though she has no plans to get back together with him.

When Dimitri finally broke into the music industry, Victoria saw it as her chance to try to break into the industry as well. But she found out that being a girl in the indie rock world, when she played only violin and sang was not exactly as easy as one might have thought it would be. She played violin and sang back up for most of Dimitri’s albums, but it was her work with The Strings that started to give her a name. The group, made up of a typical string quartet, did tributes to famous bands that everyone knew and loved. One of the cult favorites was 2006’s release of The Tribute to Dimitri Cooke, which was of no surprise to Victoria. She owed a lot of her career to her cousin and pretty much her best friend.

But before the cult classic tribute came out, Vicki released an EP with the help of Dayton and Dimitri that she called ‘Electric Vio’, in honor of one of the instruments that she loved to play. She was slowly getting herself into the music field, and she was going to make everyone take her seriously, and realize that she was more than just Dimitri’s cousin.But in joining her cousin and her ex-husband on their summer long tour, Victoria has come to realize that drama will follow her wherever she goes as long as she stays close with her family and her exes, but she had never found a reason not to. Scared of starting fresh with a new guy, she keeps herself closed off for the fear that she’s going to fall in love with the wrong person all over again.

FULL NAME: Victoria Natalie Hellstrom
CREDITED AS: Victoria Hellstrom, Vicki Hellstrom, The Strings
NICKNAMES:Vicki, Vick
DATE OF BIRTH: December 12, 1979
SUN SIGN: Sagittarius
FAMILY: Dimitri Cooke, Cousin
STATUS: Divorced
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: Dayton Stroud
NATIONALITY:Italian American
BIRTHPLACE: Chicago, IL
HOMETOWN: Burr Ridge, IL
RESIDENCE: Chicago, IL
EYE COLOR: Green
HAIR COLOR: Brown
HEIGHT: 5' 7"
PIERCINGS: Ears.
OCCUPATION: Singer/Songwriter
BLOG: http://www.electricvio.com

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