Wealthy Clientele in the County Continue to Lure Prostitution : Case history: One woman’s decision to join an escort service didn’t come easily. But ‘the money was so good’ that her work became a ‘very addictive business.’

The first time Rene got paid to have sex with a man she cried.

“I couldn’t believe that I had done it,” said the 38-year-old Loma Linda woman. She said she went home and took a long shower after the experience but “couldn’t wash that feeling off because it was done.”

Her decision to become a prostitute late last year for an escort service that catered occasionally to an Orange County clientele didn’t come easily, she said.

“I had been married for 18 years . . . and I lost everything in our divorce. When you’re used to a household with $300,000 going through it, you get used to a certain lifestyle.”

In addition, she said, she had a 17-year-old son to support.

Sitting at a table in the Sheriff’s Department vice office next to the investigator who had arrested her, Rene agreed to be interviewed on condition that her real name not be used. She said her story is typical of the many women who end up trapped by the easy money that prostitutes can make in Orange County and elsewhere.

After her divorce, she said, she tried to survive “the good girl way.”

She held down three jobs at the same time, clerking for a title company and working as a dental assistant and cocktail waitress. “But I still wasn’t making it,” she said.

She became frustrated. “I had no formal education. I was in my late 30s, and I couldn’t foresee going to work somewhere making minimum wage,” she said.

So when she saw the ad in the newspaper that read “escorts wanted,” she applied, even though she knew it meant having sex with strangers, she said.

Although she said she felt bad after her first “date,” she said the pain was lessened by the $175 she took home that night. After that, she said, it got easier.

“The money was so good. . . . I was making $1,000 a week, sometimes more,” she said.

Just weeks into the business, Rene said she felt herself become a “hardened” professional.

She started carrying a beeper wherever she went so she could receive referrals from the service.

Soon, she learned “to take calls away from the service,” developing her own clientele base so she didn’t have to share the $250 she charged.

But the biggest challenge of all was keeping her work a secret from family and friends. “I didn’t want anyone to know what I was doing,” she said.

Most of her customers, she said, were wealthy, married men who usually told her that they loved their wives but were not sexually satisfied. “I thought it was a waste, but I would take their money,” she said.

After a while, however, she said she started to feel the strains of the job. She was taking calls at all hours of the day and night and started taking drugs just to keep awake.

“I still wanted to be able to keep my house up and do the daily things I wanted to do . . . like spend time with my son,” she said.

With the hectic pace, Rene said, she got sloppy. Eventually, she was fooled by an Orange County Sheriff’s Department undercover vice investigator.

“I guess it was just my time,” she said.

When the team of vice investigators came crashing through her hotel door, she said she was “devastated.” Investigators persuaded her to help them shut down the owner of her San Bernardino-based escort service.

Several months after her first date, she was out of the business.

“I was playing Russian roulette with my body,” she said.

Even in her fairly short stint as a prostitute she was changed, she said: “Something dies inside of you.”

Recently Rene remarried. She said she told her new husband about her past and got a job working for a real estate firm.

Later this month she will be the key witness in Orange County Superior Court in a criminal pimping case against her former employer.

Reflecting back on her ordeal, Rene said: “It’s a very addictive business. . . . It’s strange, but sometimes I miss it.”