[1] Holding a dual citizenship to compete internationally, she attained two U.S. outdoor championship titles (2002 and 2003) in the triple jump, picked up a silver medal at the 2003 Pan American Games in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and finished twenty-eighth at the 2004 Summer Olympics.

Her father Juan Carlos Martínez Vallez was arrested upon his arrival in the United States for criminal charges, and thereby sentenced to life imprisonment in Georgia; her mother Osmayda Pérez was killed by a stray bullet under obscure circumstances in a neighborhood shooting in San Diego, California.

[2][3] While residing in Cuba throughout her childhood and teenage years, Perez developed herself into one of the country's most promising young athletes, taking three high school championship titles and a silver medal in the triple jump from the 1997 Junior Pan American Games.

[4] Upon her arrival to the United States in early 2000 with just a backpack full of clothes and a reservation at a foster home, Perez left herself meager, jobless, and inarticulate in English, until she was befriended by social worker Cruz Olivarria, who invited to live with her in downtown Tucson.

In 2001, Perez quickly loomed into the national scene at the USA Outdoor Championships in Eugene, Oregon, where she surged past the U.S. record holder and 1996 Olympian Sheila Hudson with a remarkable leap of 13.98 m (45 ft 10+1⁄4 in), to finish second in the triple jump but lost to Tiombe Hurd by two inches and a quarter.