Call Girl Puts Brakes on the Fast Life

Her work began when the sun went down. Armed with a beeper and a portable credit card imprinter, the blond, brown-eyed woman would leave her Costa Mesa apartment for an evening of furtive entrances and hasty exits from hotel rooms around the county. By 3 in the morning, Ellen Iarquardson had been with four different men and had $400 in her pocket to show for it.

“I always got the money first,” explained Marquardson, who went by the name Leah Adams during the seven years she was a prostitute. “There would be a little discussion and generally there would be about five to ten minutes of trying to make the guy relax a little bit, especially if he had never used an escort before. Then we’d be off to the bedroom.”

Although it seems like a lifetime ago to her, the three years Marquardson spent working for “Cover Girl” and “Foxy Lady Escorts” are not ones she can easily forget.

“There was a certain amount of excitement, a kind of challenge to be able to walk in and drive a strange man crazy and get paid for it,” Marquardson said during a recent interview. “I was good at it and I don’t mean physically. I wasn’t one of the prettiest girls, but I did have a knack for being able to walk in and pretend that this guy is great and wonderful and attractive. That’s what he’s paying for--attention.”

There were daily shopping sprees at South Coast Plaza, a trip to Europe with a Newport Beach accountant and copious amounts of cocaine between calls. One of the few items in her sparsely furnished apartment is an antique chest, a gift from a New Jersey businessman who grew fond of her during his frequent trips to California. The money, she said, poured in at the rate of $5,000 a month--most of it from Newport Beach, Anaheim and Costa Mesa residents. Adams said there were times she saw as many as seven men in a night.

“I was so spoiled making that kind of money I had no conception of how to budget,” Marquardson said, adding that she moved to Orange County because of its reputation as a “hot spot” on the escort circuit. “Most of my money went on expensive clothing, cocaine, wild spur-of-the-moment type things like trips to Las Vegas. I spent it as fast as I made it because I thought it would never end.”

But there were also the darker moments.

She was raped as she entered a Mission Viejo home on a call. (“The police describe it as not getting paid,” she said.) She is unable to have children today, the result of constant exposure to bacteria from her customers. And, as many prostitutes report, she suffered from low self-esteem.

By the time Santa Ana police shut down Cover Girl Escorts, Marquardson, then 25, was physically and emotionally spent, addicted to drugs, a young woman who didn’t know who she was anymore.

62 Days in Jail

“It got to the point where I was selling my soul,” said Marquardson, who in 1983 spent 62 days in jail for conspiracy to commit prostitution. “I felt so drained and so abused after a while. Clients that use prostitutes generally have no respect for them. They’ll treat you real good during the encounter, but think of you as unwholesome. So you have to detach yourself. You can’t let yourself like these people because there is so much potential for pain.

“The arrest was one of the most traumatic things I have been through. It was like going through a major identity crisis. I was scared to do anything else because I had done it for so long. I also identified with being a call girl, a madam. That’s who I was.”

It has been five years since Marquardson’s days as a prostitute. She has since moved back to Seattle where her parents live and has held a number of odd jobs, including helping to manage a family-owned apartment building. Most recently, she completed a drug rehabilitation program for a heroin habit and is teaching herself to play the saxophone.

“My life is not as exciting anymore,” said Marquardson, who turned 30 in September. “I’m not in the fast lane, but I’m definitely happy. I like myself better. Escort services present the opportunity for so many people to screw up their lives.”

Times photographer Kari Rene Hall contributed to this story.