Witness Quotes Doctor: ‘I’ll Make You Look 30’ : Medicine: A one-time Mrs. California pageant winner says plastic surgeon performed operations that she ‘absolutely never, ever’ wanted.

In a Hollywood-style courtroom showdown over a face lift gone awry, a one-time Mrs. California pageant winner from Orange County broke down in tears Thursday as she testified that a Newport Beach cosmetic surgeon gave her a nose job and cheek implants that she “absolutely never, ever” wanted.

Bonnie Luebke, 55, of Trabuco Canyon maintained that she went to Dr. Michael Elam in 1985 for a relatively simple eyelid tuck and a jowl lift, but that the well-known plastic surgeon insisted, “I’ll make you look 30” and promised that she would look like actress Linda Evans.

Luebke testified at a hearing by the Medical Board of California, which is deciding whether to revoke Elam’s license.

She asserted that Elam, the doctor who helped rebuild Phyllis Diller’s face, vowed to do the operation “my way” and drugged her into signing consent papers for the procedure.

As the runner-up for the 1984 Mrs. America title broke down in relating “the terrible trauma” of the incident, Administrative Law Judge Rosalyn M. Chapman in Los Angeles ordered a recess to allow her time to calm herself.

During parts of Luebke’s testimony, Elam laughed aloud and rolled his eyes repeatedly. Dismissing Luebke’s claims as “lies,” Elam insists that he is the innocent target of both professional jealousy over his rapid success and bad feelings over the breakup of his short romance with one of Luebke’s daughters.

“Ever since I was a kid in grammar school, I’ve had problems with my ex-girlfriends,” Elam quipped during a court recess. “And in this case, all I can say is that I’m glad I didn’t marry into this family.”

The daughter whom Elam dated for a few months, 31-year-old Debbie Luebke Nelson of Saddleback Valley, countered in a later interview that her relationship with Elam had nothing to do with the state probe or with a separate, ongoing civil claim that her mother has brought against the doctor.

“He wanted a commitment. I just wanted to be friends. But there were no hard feelings,” said Nelson, who once finished second with Bonnie Luebke in a televised, nationwide mother-daughter pageant.

Nelson also testified at Thursday’s hearing. She asserted that Elam had said frequently how much more beautiful and younger he could make Bonnie Luebke look. Nelson also recounted her fear when she picked up her mother after the operation and found her bloodied, dazed and wrapped “like a mummy.”

The elder Luebke, who testified that she has devoted much of the last three decades to being “what I call the perfect community leader and mother,” wore sunglasses on the witness stand until the judge asked her to remove them. She said she now has a large scar on her forehead “like Frankenstein” and has had problems with movement of her right cheek implant and with a novocaine-like numbing on the top of her head and face.

But she said that the main damage has been psychological in trying to accept the alterations “when you’re 50 years old and you’ve lived with the same face all your life and it’s something God gave you.”

After the operation, “I was absolutely on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” she said. “I tried to psyche myself out. . . . I was trying to convince myself this didn’t happen.”

The 41-year-old Elam, who has long lists of both star patients like Diller and unhappy patients who have sued him, is charged by the state medical board with gross negligence and dishonesty for allegedly carrying out the operations without Luebke’s consent and then falsifying her medical records to try to collect more than $3,700 in insurance money.

Also named as a defendant in the case is Elam’s former partner, Frederick Berkowitz. State officials say he had only a limited role in the Luebke case but that he and Elam both played central parts in a botched 1984 “tummy tuck” on another woman, in which the state medical board is also alleging negligence and insurance fraud against the two physicians.

Their hearing is likely to last through at least next week, followed by a ruling from Chapman that will then be reviewed by the medical board. If the charges are substantiated, Elam and Berkowitz could both face suspension or revocation of their licenses, probation or other penalties.

Last year, 49 physicians in California lost their licenses at least temporarily through such actions by the state medical board, according to state officials.

Adding another twist to the Luebke case in testimony earlier in the week were overtones of harassment against one of the state’s principal expert witnesses.

Dr. Robert Miner, a Santa Ana plastic surgeon who is president-elect of the Orange County Medical Assn. and has been one of Elam’s chief detractors, said he received a threatening phone call from a man who falsely claimed he was a doctor and suggested that Miner could be endangering himself through his involvement in the Elam affair, according to state Deputy Atty. Gen. Barry Ladendorf.