COLUMN ONE : Personal PR: Newest ‘Necessity’ : More and more people in the public eye--whether there by chance or by choice--are turning to public relations consultants to polish images, drum up business and handle the media.

Lorrie Helm had never been in the public eye. But reporters clamored for her attention after ex-husband Buck was found trapped amid the rubble of the October, 1989, earthquake that sent a portion of Oakland’s Nimitz Freeway tumbling onto his Chevy Sprint.

TV executives telephoned her. Movie producers begged for her attention.

“Reporters chased me down the hospital floor. The telephone never stopped ringing. Messages were slipped under our hotel room door. We kept getting crazy offers--some so ridiculous they made me cry,” said Helm, whose ex-husband was rescued but eventually died from his injuries.

The pressure became too great. But Lorrie Helm didn’t turn to a doctor or psychiatrist. She hired a Beverly Hills public relations firm. Within hours all inquiries were being screened by someone she hadn’t even known a few days earlier.

Welcome to modern-day PR.

“Instead of saying, ‘See my attorney,’ you say, ‘See my publicist,’ ” said Walter Lubars, chairman of Boston University’s School of Mass Communication and Public Relations.

Not too many years ago, it was oh-so-hip to hire a personal guru who could discern your yin from your yang. More recently, just about everyone but the guy at the doughnut shop seemed to have a personal body trainer. But these days, especially in media-conscious Los Angeles, there always seems to be a public relations specialist in tow.

We’re not talking about actors and athletes. Everyone knows they have well-paid publicity mills. We’re talking ophthalmologists and French chefs. Dog groomers and dentists--particularly Beverly Hills dentists who specialize in smile reconstructions. We’re talking plastic surgeons and stockbrokers. Rheumatologists and CPAs use them. So do Westside philanthropists and chichi landscapers--especially those who plant bougainvillea in Bel-Air.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev had one when he visited San Francisco. While he works to save elephants in Africa, paleontologist Richard E. Leakey has a publicist back in the States. Even a conservative branch of the Roman Catholic Church recently hired a public relations firm.

“It used to be only rock stars and soap opera wanna-bes who hired press agents,” said Chris Barnett, senior editor of the Bulldog Reporter, a Berkeley newsletter written for public relations professionals. “Now, just about everyone does.”

One Westside publicist who represents arts organizations was recently telephoned by a potential client.

“No, I don’t handle ophthalmologists,” Christine Anderson told the caller, “but I know someone who does.”

The trend has reached deep into the Valley, even to Calabasas. A French chef there has hired a public relations firm to get her some ink. How to do that? Well, the firm sent out a press release that described Bernadette Millet as a pioneering woman “seeking more open respect” for female chefs.

All of this has some people asking: Is it getting a bit out of hand? Does everybody really have to have a PR person?

“It’s a new slickness,” said Vance Packard, author of the book “The Hidden Persuaders.” “Public relations adds a gloss of phoniness to world opinion.”

He should know.

“If you want to be a successful author, the first thing you do is hire a publicist,” he said. “When I get a book out, some public relations person takes charge and runs me 47 places in one week.”

What it really comes down to is this: “People just don’t believe advertising,” said Bulldog Reporter’s Barnett. Most people will, however, believe what they read in newspaper articles or see on the TV news.

That is one reason why Dr. Vincent R. Forshan, a prominent plastic surgeon in Rancho Mirage, has occasionally hired public relations help--for monthly fees of as much as $3,000. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal and has even appeared on Cable News Network.

“Sure, I’ve used publicists. Lots of plastic surgeons do,” Forshan said. “I’m a doctor, not a public relations specialist. You don’t get on TV or in magazines without someone doing some of your homework for you.”

Then there’s Helen Stulberg, a landscaper to the stars. She has designed yards for foreign dignitaries, TV actors and studio chiefs. Her Westwood company, Affaires of the Garden, has hired two publicists over the last 10 years. Articles have been written about her in many newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the defunct Herald Examiner. Why hire a publicist? Said Stulberg, “There’s a lot of competition out there.”

One critic insists that journalism has become “polluted” with articles based solely on paid press releases. “These messages are usually manipulative,” said Joan Konner, dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. “But they get into the paper as journalism.”

Sometimes even PR specialists get red-faced over actions by other publicists. Jerry Dalton, president of the industry’s largest trade group, the Public Relations Society of America, is still embarrassed by the role publicists have played in the divorce proceedings between Donald Trump and his wife, Ivana.

“I must admit, I was taken aback when each of them had a separate publicist for their divorce,” he said. “I ascribe higher levels of ideals to this profession than pure publicity alone.”

At issue is credibility.

“There are different types of truth: reportorial truth and public relations truth,” said Tom Goldstein, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley.

“You have to remember, you’re dealing in the era of big media,” said Goldstein, who was a spokesman for former New York Mayor Edward I. Koch and before that was a reporter with the New York Times. “Big media begets big public relations.”

The proliferation of publicists is particularly dramatic in Los Angeles, where manufacturing celebrities is an indigenous industry. No one knows exactly how many people work in the field in the Los Angeles area. Local business directories list more than 700 public relations operations.

Still, PR people are pouring into the marketplace. Nationwide, the number of public relations professionals rose to 159,000 last year, compared to about 116,000 in 1975, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. A department spokesman says the actual numbers could be twice those reported. Meanwhile, a recent study estimates that nearly 22,000 college students are majoring in public relations.

These days, however, you have to be careful just whom you call a publicist. Generally speaking, publicists are paid agents who spend much of their time trying to get stories written or broadcast about their clients. Public relations specialists, on the other hand, usually spend more time responding to requests for information. In either case, it’s often a lucrative field. Public relations firms can command monthly fees of $1,000 to $10,000 per client.

The pay may be good, but public relations has long been a profession riddled with image problems. Sometimes it’s hard to take seriously a profession whose top thinkers would look at a drive-in theater and suggest a horses-only screening of the film “Blazing Saddles.” It happened.

Of course, there’s more than fun and games to the profession. One of the most widely publicized links between an organization and a public relations firm came in April with the announcement by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops that it was spending a reported $5 million to better publicize its anti-abortion message. To accomplish that difficult task, it hired the nation’s largest public relations firm, Hill & Knowlton.

The man who played the key role in this decision was Father John W. Gouldrick, who oversees the conference’s Committee For Pro-Life Activities. He strongly insists that there is nothing inappropriate about the church seeking public relations help for its antiabortion cause.

“If I thought the church was selling its soul to Madison Avenue, I’d be very upset,” Gouldrick said. “That is not the case. We’re just trying to do a better job of getting our message out.”

When Hill & Knowlton agreed to take on the bishops’ account, that caused dissension among some employees. Nearly one-third of the agency’s New York staff signed a letter protesting the decision. But Robert L. Dilenschneider, the firm’s chief executive, said his company had no qualms about taking the church on as a client.

“We’re driven by the First Amendment,” Dilenschneider said. “Everyone has the right to have their story told.”

But each story should be a complete one, critics contend. A public relations specialist is very often the first person a journalist talks to on a story, said Columbia University’s Konner. “But that should never be the last person.”

Yet earlier this summer, after baseball great Pete Rose was sentenced to five months in prison and fined $50,000 for filing false income tax returns, he did not speak with reporters. Only his paid publicist, Barbara Pinzka, did.

Pinzka was hired by Rose in September, 1989, two weeks after he was banned for life from baseball. She says her job is not to sugarcoat Rose’s problems but to try to restore some balance.

“I know most people are skeptical of public relations people because we have an image of being manipulative,” Pinzka said. “People in the news media forget how skilled they are as communicators and how unskilled the rest of the world is. Public relations people sort of even it up.”

It’s usually easy to get a PR person. But some have had a hard time. Hill & Knowlton turned down requests to represent now-deposed Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega as well as the Colombian drug cartel. Edward L. Bernays, regarded by many as the father of public relations, had the good sense to say no when Adolf Hitler asked him to be his American public relations man.

In Los Angeles, publicists at some local hospitals sometimes try to turn national medical stories--such as the 1981 shooting of then-President Ronald Reagan--into public relations bonanzas by offering instant “experts” to local and national newscasts.

“I guess it’s almost like taking advantage of tragedies,” said Rhoda Weiss, a Santa Monica marketing consultant who spent years as an outside publicist for St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank. But, she points out, the information can also be helpful to the public. In October, 1987, when then-First Lady Nancy Reagan had breast cancer surgery, Weiss arranged for a hospital surgeon to appear on local talk shows and “The CBS Evening News.”

“There’s so much competition for business that hospitals need to get their name out,” Weiss said. “Advertising doesn’t do it. You have to get third-party validation in the news.”

One Beverly Hills rheumatologist who specializes in the treatment of osteoporosis recently hired a public relations consultant.

“The nature of medicine has changed,” said rheumatologist Stuart Silverman. “The Westside market is very tight.”

Although Gary Gottesfeld’s agent told him not to, the Encino author spent $3,500 of his own money to publicize his first thriller, “The Violet Closet.”

The publicist he hired, Jacqueline Green of Beverly Hills, decided that the best way to get some attention for the paperback was by raising the eyebrows of the distributor--the company that would deliver the paperback to supermarkets and stores.

So she arranged a blue-collar version of an autograph party: a gathering at 6 a.m., over doughnuts and coffee, with 20 truck drivers who would be distributing the book locally. Gottesfeld schmoozed with the drivers and signed copies of the book. The truck drivers responded by giving the book choice display in key locations such as Los Angeles International Airport. The book is now in its second printing.

More and more publicists are being criticized for seeking out clients who, often because of some tragedy, find themselves unexpectedly foisted into the news.

“I don’t like it any more than lawyers who descend on an airfield after a plane crash,” said Dalton of the Public Relations Society of America.

The Beverly Hills publicist who was hired by Lorrie Helm notes that he did not seek her out. “I was asked by the family’s attorney to help,” said Gary Frischer. “They were being bombarded with phone calls.”

Sometimes it is a cause that attracts a publicist to an issue--or a person. In April, 1987, six weeks before he was to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy, Joseph Steffan, an honor student, was kicked out for acknowledging that he is gay. Several months later, Steffan filed suit against the Department of Defense. It was about this time that he was introduced to Beverly Hills publicist Howard Bragman.

“Maybe it’s a little ironic in the sense that he was an unknown man who suddenly had a publicist,” said Bragman, who is giving Steffan his assistance for free. “But sometimes causes need publicists too. I felt it was important that he have all the help he can in fighting his battle.”

Steffan has appeared on numerous TV talk shows, including “Nightline” and “Donahue.” Did Steffan ever expect to have a personal publicist at his side?

“Never, never in a million years,” he said. “I’m supposed to be on a submarine someplace--not fighting a legal battle.”

One San Francisco public relations firm recently tackled a pretty high-powered assignment. Ten days before Soviet President Gorbachev arrived in San Francisco in June, Peter Necarsulmer received an urgent call from the mayor’s office. His public relations agency, PBN Co., was asked to oversee media relations for the mass of reporters expected in town.

“What no one told us is that we’d also become the official news bureau for the visit,” Necarsulmer said. Anyone who called the city with questions about the Gorbachev visit heard a recording that gave them the phone number for Necarsulmer’s agency.

Even paleontologist Leakey, who for years has tried to prevent poaching of the African elephant in Kenya, has an American firm churning out publicity for him.

“On the average day we get 15 to 20 calls from people who want to contact Dr. Leakey,” said John Samford, president of Dallas-based Media West Communications. “Africa is a long way from the United States. It would be virtually impossible for Dr. Leakey to answer these calls and still get his job done.”

Just how out of hand can this business of public relations get? Well, how about public relations people hiring other public relations experts?

Such was the case with Karen York, who with her husband, Arnold, now owns and publishes the Malibu Times and the Country & Canyon Times weekly newspapers. When York had her own advertising and public relations firm, she retained a publicist to represent it.

“We felt if we left publicizing ourselves to ourselves, we’d be like the shoemaker’s children,” York said. “We’d always come last.”

Even--you guessed it--the Public Relations Society of America has on staff three full-time public relations employees, said Donna Peltier, the society’s manager of public relations.

Does Peltier ever get razzed about being the public relations chief for the public relations group? “People sometimes smirk when I tell them,” she said. “I suppose it’s like being the lawyer for the American Bar Assn.”

One Los Angeles publicist, who asked not to be named, is fed up with it all. She is about ready to leave the profession because of one client who recently hired her firm. The client, a retired Los Angeles executive, told the agency he wanted the maximum amount of publicity for the minimum amount of money he could give to start a charitable foundation.

As it turned out, he gave about $100,000 to the foundation--about what he spent for publicity.

“His vision was that Morley Safer (of “60 Minutes”) would come rolling into his mansion,” the publicist said of her client. “All he wanted was to buy his way into the Westside liberal crowd.” He did. As for the publicist, well, “I play the lottery,” she said, “so I can get out of PR.”

Even in Los Angeles, not everyone has a personal publicist--yet. One notable holdout is super-chef Wolfgang Puck. The Westside restaurateur is continually being approached by publicists pitching their services.

His standard reply: “What will you pay me?”

Times librarian Janet Lundblad contributed to research for this article.