The Not Ready for Prime Time Plaintiffs : When Rebecca and Clifford Robinson Decided to Sue UC Irvine’s Fertility Clinic, They Thought Just Telling Their Story of Loss and Betrayal Would Be Enough. Their Lawyer Did Not. Facts Only Go So Far--What the Robinson’s Needed Was a Media Coach.

Rebecca Robinson has gone rigid with fright. She sits bolt upright, pinned to her chair as the camera zooms in and the microphone swings her way. A well-modulated voice fires questions from off-screen: “Who do you blame?” “What is it that you hope to accomplish?” “Was this your only option?” Her husband, Cliff, is with her, but he rarely jumps in. Rebecca stumbles through a few answers, then falters and, finally, gives up. “Sorry,” she says. “My mind just went blank.”

OK, cut.

This electronic inquisition takes place on a “living room” talk-show set that resembles other talk-show sets more than it does anybody’s living room. There’s a potted palm, a videogenic basket of red onions on the circular glass table and a serpentine, plastic film strip hanging on the back wall. Only this isn’t a talk show. Pull back past the electronic recording equipment, satellite feed earpieces and other telejournalism equipment and find that this “set” is scrunched against the far end of a commercial loft.

We are at Ready For Media. It’s like “Meet the Press” on training wheels, where the uninitiated can rehearse for their baptism in the spotlight. “Our goal is to basically help them tell their story in a way that will communicate via the media,” says Anne Ready of the Robinsons. Ready abandoned a journalism career 15 years ago to start the company.

Typically, the clients who dole out hundreds--even thousands--of dollars for the type of “communications consulting” that Ready and her peers provide are business types in public relations crises, authors on their first television tour or other representatives of big money or special interests who need some quick tips before the cameras roll and the questions fly. But the Robinsons are regular folks. Rebecca, 36, works for the Stater Bros. supermarket chain as a receiving clerk. Cliff, 38, is a framing foreman for B.L. construction. They are admittedly low-key and don’t covet the glare of publicity. But they are plaintiffs in a highly publicized and complicated lawsuit.

In 1989, they entered a fertility clinic affiliated with UC Irvine and embarked on an excruciating and arduous attempt to conceive. Two years and three failed in vitro fertilizations later, they quit. Their efforts to collect the what Rebecca estimates are the “11 embryos plus multitudes of eggs” that were harvested and never used were stonewalled. Then, last May, they picked up a newspaper and discovered that they were not alone: Although the doctors have continued to deny any wrongdoing, UC Irvine has since substantiated that not only eggs but also embryos (fertilized eggs) had been taken from some patients and given to others without either party’s knowledge or consent. An avalanche of lawsuits and investigations ensued.

Horrified, the Robinsons contacted Newport Beach medical malpractice attorney Theodore S. Wentworth, who, according to the story they read, had filed suit on behalf of John and Debbie Challender, another couple whose embryos and eggs were missing. The Robinsons joined the growing list of plaintiffs.

Soon, thanks to Wentorth, millions of people will know their personal and tragic story. After Ready for Media, the Robinsons go on TV for real.

Theodore Wentworth believes in media. “There is an elegant way to treat a high-profile client and ‘No comment’ is not the way,” he says. “You have to teach the high-profile client how to defend himself against totally proper inquiries from the media.”

The UCI case is the first major litigation to hit the fertility frontier. The hearings have barely begun, but the media’s demand for plaintiffs is intense.

“It’s just been a constant stream,” says Wentworth. “So I’ve helped the media to acquire their stories when they come beating on my door--and that’s how it works, you understand--they come beating on the door.”

Wentworth first answered the media’s call with the Challenders. After the Ready for Media treatment, the Corona couple appeared on all local and national TV news programs, including the “Today” show and Tom Snyder. They were featured in People and Redbook and in newspapers around the world.

“The Challenders just have a fabulous personality for going forward,” Wentworth says. Wentworth had another couple, Budge and Diane Porter, flown in from Nebraska and, via Ready for Media, into their own media blitz.

Wentworth answered my request for a media-bound plaintiff with the Robinsons. He booked them on “Leeza”--a daytime talk show hosted by former “Entertainment Tonight” reporter/anchor Leeza Gibbons.

“ ‘Leeza’ is a wonderful show,” Wentworth says. “It’s a very valid forum for discussion of this.” He leans in earnestly. “Wouldn’t it be disrespectful of me to tell the ‘Leeza’ show ‘no comment?’ ”

Technically, the Robinsons encounter the media before encountering Ready For Media. On the afternoon before their appointment, I meet them in Wentworth’s office. There, I first hear Rebecca’s story as well as her frustration at not being able to convey the emotional impact of her predicament. “I’m very emotional on this subject,” she often says. “It’s hard to just tell you in 30 words or less why you feel like you were an injured party.”

A cold evaluation of all the UCI victims would conclude that the Challenders have the most compelling story. Not only has their embryo allegedly been tracked to another couple, who gave birth to twins, they were distressed to learn that the boy and girl were being raised in a different religion. Another couple claims to have a biological child born to a family in Spain. Yet another client’s embryo was reportedly traced to a university zoology department.

The Robinsons were culled from the second tier of plaintiffs. There is no evidence any child of the Robinsons’ was born to anyone. While it is clear that something deplorable has happened, with no definite offspring or other unusual circumstances, it’s difficult to pinpoint the dramatic center of their tragedy.

“They don’t know how to sound-bite,” Wentworth tells me later. “They tend to wander in [an] interview. But by the end of tomorrow, they’ll understand how to open the conversation and shut it.”

In the meantime, tomorrow looms over Rebecca. “I’m just totally frightened,” she says. “I don’t like attention at all.”

The Riverside couple says the decision to sacrifice their anonymity was difficult to make. It ultimately boiled down to their faith in Ted Wentworth. “That’s the only reason why we really, really decided to come out,” Cliff says. “We feel that he’ll be there for us. We’re kind of riding on Ted’s shoulders on this.”

Wentworth has never seen “Leeza.” Neither have the Robinsons. The show’s staff has already contacted Rebecca, who now explains to everyone present that the show is not about UCI but about egg donation in general. The guests will be women who have donated eggs as well as those who’ve had babies as a result of such donations. The Robinsons’ function is to provide the what-can-go-wrong testimonial.

After a short interview with the Robinsons, I take my leave. I tell the couple I only wanted us to meet once before spending all that time together tomorrow. They blink uncomprehendingly.

“We’re meeting you tomorrow?” Cliff asks.

The shroud of legal discretion makes it difficult to say exactly how many media-coached plaintiffs are spilling out their sad stories on the nightly news.

“Since the O.J. trial, I’ve seen a lot of lawyers running to the elementary-school type of media training, like Ready for Media,” says Brent Seltzer, president of McDonald Media Services, a Studio City-based public relations company. His company has seen its share of litigation-related customers, but he won’t say more because “with lawyers you have to guarantee anonymity.”

“It’s becoming a very current thing,” says Timothy Reuben, a trial attorney and partner in the Beverly Hills firm of Reuben & Novicoff, which specializes in business trial law. “Just like it was once fashionable in a big piece of litigation to use a jury consultant. Now, they’re into media consultants and acting coaches.”

“The influence of TV and TV news on all of us inevitably changes the way that juries respond to the presentation of facts in a case,” says Aviva Diamond, another ex-journalist who now hawks her skills as president of an L.A. consulting firm called Blue Streak communications. “People now are accustomed to hearing information put forth in a clear, concise manner. They are accustomed to hearing info-McNuggets.”

But not every lawyer, not even every lawyer in the UCI case, believes that media consultants are worth the money. “We’ve been contacted by practically every news place you can think of,” says Melanie Blum, whose Orange law office represents 12 plaintiffs in the UCI case. Although Blum has certainly courted media attenion--she, a client and a Channel 9 News crew stormed into a UCI-affiliated clinic in Laguna Hills and removed her client’s embryos--she sniffs at the notion of hiring a media trainer.

“I don’t have to look at these people and say, ‘I need to improve your public image so that you will be liked by the people on TV,’ ” she says, comparing the expression of a patient informed that her eggs were misappropriated to those of survivors of the Oklahoma City bombing. “None of those people had to go to media consultants to look the way they looked,” she says.

Santa Monica attorney Larry Feldman, who represents two plaintiffs in UCI suit, is even more outspoken. “Most lawyers concerned with winning lawsuits,” he says, “do not send their clients on a media tour, let alone tell the world that they sent their client to media school.”

Anne Ready lives media. She has coordinated all the elements, serving as liaison between Wentworth, “Leeza” and me.

She waits for me in her office in a postmodern monolith in downtown Santa Monica. The Robinsons’ first step toward media-preparedness, she says this evening, was filling out a questionnaire that included such queries as “What do you hope to accomplish in this training?” “What specific situations do you find most difficult?” Even “What question are you most concerned a reporter will ask you?” As she speaks, she fiddles with some papers. “This is confidential,” she says, holding up the Robinsons’ filled-out questionnaires. She pushes them to my side of the table. “But if you see anything that you want to, um . . . “

The dark, quiet office, I left that evening is a hubbub of activity when I return the next morning. The Robinsons’ session is in full swing. They’ve been issued their Ready for Media kits, which contains the “Six Cs of media communication” (“concise, clear, confident . . . “). As advised, they’ve brought along outfits in video-friendly colors: a dark, square-neck, teal dress with bone pumps for Rebecca; a green polo shirt and khaki chinos for Cliff. They are discussing their anxieties and taking notes to help identify and isolate what their message is--or, in Ready’s lingo, “to bottom-line it.”

“What are some of your points?” Ready asks. Rebecca responds student-like: “If the doctors don’t get any media coverage, they might hope it goes away.”

“What do you hope to accomplish?”

“I would like a bit of closure,” Cliff answers.

At one point, Ready’s probing of Rebecca’s feelings elicits tears. “I feel cheated!” she says.

“That’s just perfect,” Ready cheers. “Now you have a word you can use.”

Also at the table is Joseph Benti, a former CBS news anchorman who is now a consultant. Ready for Media’s full-time payroll consists of only Ready and an assistant named Jane Nguyen. Ready will often contract Benti for the day. His sonorous, Harry Reasoner voice helps create a convincing media experience.

“You’re grist for their mill,” he intones. “You’re there because this is the ‘90s. If you have a gripe, you go public. That’s all. When they leave you and go to a commercial break, it’s all written on the wind. All the audience has is the power of what you left them.”

“We’re scared to death,” says Cliff. “I feel that the media can slant what we want to say.”

“I feel very uncomfortable in front of the camera,” adds Rebecca, her chin pressed against her chest. “It’s so distracting.”

Their first run-through is a bomb. Rebecca cannot shake that doe-in-the-headlights look. At one point, she is asked about her doctors.

She begins, “Doctor Asch and Doctor Balmaceda,” then clamps her hand over her mouth. “I don’t know if I should say their names,” she says. Ready lets me know that the Robinsons’ attorney has cautioned them not to use proper names.

“No,” Rebecca interrupts. “Mr. Wentworth hasn’t.”

“Mr. Wentworth hasn’t told us anything!” Cliff wails, throwing his hands up. “Not legal advice, not nothing.”

“The ‘Leeza’ show told us,” Rebecca explains, restoring calm. “They don’t want to be liable because we’re on their show.”

Anne Ready replays the tape. The Robinsons study themselves while she critiques.

“You’re getting mired in ‘Where are my records?’ ” Ready points out. “The truth is ‘Where are my babies?’ or ‘Where are my embryos?’ ”

She teaches them how to “sit on their feet” so that their bodies don’t go lax, giving a cavalier impression. Tension runs so high that Rebecca at one point turns on Cliff, slapping his thigh, complaining that “he just leaves me out there and doesn’t say anything.” Ready battles the Robinsons’ nerves with relentlessly upbeat cheerleading and pithy nuggets of media know-how. “The secret of all this,” she says, “is to answer their questions with the answers you already have to give.”

The Robinsons watch themselves get stumped by “Why are you suing?” There aren’t any mouth-watering dollar amounts to discuss. The Robinsons say they are suing not for money but to recover their medical records and possibly their eggs and embryos. (Wentworth, however, is expecting to recover his fee and the money he paid Ready For Media from the award.) “Well, for one thing,” Benti offers, “you were angry and you didn’t want this to happen to anybody else. And you wanted closure.”

“You felt cheated,” Ready kicks in. “You felt betrayed.”

“That’s why you’re suing,” Benti adds.

After more rehearsal, the couple faces the camera again. Benti suggests they use the taller, barstool-sized chairs instead of the low ones they sat on for their first go-round. Ready wonders whether these might be the type of chairs they use on the “Leeza” show. No one’s observed the show closely enough to be certain about the chairs or anything else. Ready’s assistant has been calling the show all morning just to find out what questions Gibbons will ask.

The second taping is an improvement, but the couple is far from media-perfect. They’re stymied by “How could this happen to you?”

Benti rephrases the question. “What could you possibly tell anyone else so that it wouldn’t happen to them?”

Rebecca recovers. “People need to ask questions and they need to expect answers from their doctors.”

They also handle “questions from the audience”--posed by Anne Ready--reasonably well. She baits them by asking whether they’re “me-too” types, glomming onto the lawsuit bandwagon.

“No,” Rebecca answers. “‘There hasn’t been any talk of money.” Adds Cliff: “Our main focus is to get our records to see where our embryos are.”

It’s a wrap. Ready is ecstatic over Rebecca’s overall performance. “Yeah, she did it! She bottom-lined it!”

But Benti interjects a sour note. “I still feel you guys are clamming up,” he says. “I hear little or no emotional content. You sort of studied your answer and now ‘I’m going to reel it off to you.’ You’re not committed.”

“All right,” Ready says, applying the upbeat gloss. “Now that you don’t have to focus on the answers, you just want to add some emotion, because it’s there.” She rewinds the tape. “All right. I want you to see how well you did.”

Watching the replay, Rebecca sides with Benti.

“They sound rehearsed,” she says glumly, referring to the images of herself and Cliff on the monitor.

“They don’t sound rehearsed. They sound bottom-lined, “ Ready counters. But morale is in a free-fall.

“When we started out, all we had was our passion,” Cliff says. “Now, we don’t even have that.”

Throughout the replay, Ready doggedly accentuates the positive. “Great answer!” she says at one point.

“Yeah, I get an attaboy!” Rebecca replies.

At 12:30 p.m., the second taped interview rolls to a close. “I’m satisfied that you got it,” Ready says. Their final bit of coaching is a card labeled “Ready, Set, Go’s.” It contains three pieces of advice in Ready’s neat, curlicue script. Cliff must jump in with his answers so that Rebecca has time to think. Rebecca must “bottom-line it!” And both of them should remember to “keep the passion and commitment.” That’s it. Ready for media or not, there’s only time for a quick food bite before the limo takes the Robinsons to Paramount Studios, where the “Leeza” show is taped.

The Robinsons are something of a curiosity to the “Leeza” staff. Guests such as Shirley MacLaine, Roseanne and Joey Buttafuoco have been on the show, but no one’s ever arrived trailing a media coach, reporter and flash-popping photographer.

Most media coaches, in fact, would be a little surprised too--reporters are to be taken on after the prep sessions, not during.

“That would violate confidentiality,” says Blue Streak’s Diamond. “I don’t let anybody into our sessions, let alone a reporter. I just think it would be such a violation of a person’s privacy--which is a bummer, because I would love to be in such a piece.”

But Anne Ready believes more media is good media.

“This is really exciting,” she gushes to one of the show’s staff. “What’s happening here is an opportunity to use media coverage to advantage and have media coverage benefit all. Everybody wins.”

The Robinsons are issued dressing room 3, which has a gold star on the door and their names on gold-leaf paper under it. Inside, there’s a couch, a TV monitor, a phone and an end table with a stack of magazines. They get teal “Leeza” T-shirts and fanny packs. Within minutes, Rebecca is herded into the makeup room.

“So, what happened to you?” the hairdresser asks, sitting Rebecca in the chair.

Rebecca tells her how Anne Ready runs this program for people who are not ready for television exposure. The hairdresser is confused. “You mean you have nothing to do with ovaries and babies?”

“Oh, no, I do,” Rebecca says. “My eggs were stolen!”

The hairdresser’s eyes open wide in shock. “Wow. Really?”

Rebecca gets back on track and tells her story.

Later, the Robinsons sit alone in their room to wait for the show to begin. They can hear a flurry of activity from the adjacent dressing room. In the center of the hubbub are two blond babies--twins--crying and spitting up, while a crush of adults coos, ahs and otherwise amuses them.

“We’re the happy, successful, usual way that egg donations work,” says Reid Nathan with a disarming smile. He is tall, trim and soap-opera handsome.

“We run an egg donor program and those are our babies,” says his wife, a tall, finely featured woman named Shelley Smith. “They were from the process of egg donation.” Smith is a former model and actress. Nathan is a lawyer and certified public accountant. Both are in their 40s. Both look like they were born ready for media.

Debbie Alpert, the show’s producer, arrives to prep the Robinsons. She holds Rebecca’s hand, explaining in a friendly, methodical manner what is about to happen. Hers is probably the most soothing voice they’ve heard all day. “There’s no right or wrong answer,” Alpert stresses. “If you talk from your heart, you cannot go wrong. I don’t care what any of the media consultants told you, you’re the best expert in the world.

“What we’re trying to do is present a couple who, at a very sensitive time in their lives, went to a clinic for assistance and feel that their trust has been betrayed,” she explains. “You’re left with more questions than you had going into it, uncertainty about your future and an annoying feeling that there is this horrible possibility that you have a biological child out there while you are still dealing with infertility,” Alpert says.

She lists questions they can expect, such as why Rebecca thinks some woman may have received her embryos.

“You can say, ‘I’ve been through the procedure three times and I know that there were a lot of unused eggs,’ ” she suggests. “ ‘The hospital is under attack. There’s even a couple, the Challenders, who’ve found that their child has gone to another couple. They won’t give me all my records and they didn’t give me a choice on what to do with my eggs.’ ”

Rebecca’s still worried. “I know you’re getting the point across that I’m trying to get across,” she says, having listened to yet another professional articulate her feelings for her. “It’s just that I’m not real well-versed as far as expressing myself.”

“You’re overanalyzing,” Alpert assures her.

As show time nears, Alpert brings them face-to-face with the star of the show.

“I was astonished to hear what’s going on,” Leeza Gibbons says, made up and dressed in a tight-fitting tan suit she’ll wear on the air. She’s leaning forward, head cocked, looking serious and concerned. “You know, it’s like something out of a movie. I mean, it’s quite traumatic.”

“Well, it is,” Rebecca says, awed. “Imagine going through it.”

Gibbons asks Rebecca whether she would go through the procedure again, “despite the physical pain, the emotional suffering?”

“Absolutely. I mean, any woman who’s had a child can empathize with what it’s like not to have a child,” Rebecca answers. She turns self-conscious. “I’m not making any sense. I’m babbling.”

“You know what?” Gibbons says. “Your story comes from gut emotion. There’s nothing you can say that’s going to be wrong because it’s your story and your feelings and you’re entitled to them. And a lot of people are going to relate to how you feel. You know, if you were to find that your eggs--and I’ll ask you this on the show--but if you were to find that your eggs had produced a child somewhere, what would your choice be?”

Rebecca has already heard this question from me, from Anne Ready and Joseph Benti.

“I wouldn’t have any choice,” she answers. “I couldn’t take a child away from the only mother it’s ever known.”

“That’s a true mom speaking,” Gibbons says approvingly. “You’re going to be great. Hopefully, we’ll get some regulation in this area because who’s guarding the house?”

“It needs it,” Rebecca says, emphatically. “It really does.”

Gibbons glides off. “OK,” Alpert says, “give yourself a big hug and take a breath, the show’s about to start.”

The Robinsons retreat to their dressing room. Ready sidles up to me. “I’m going to slip out,” she says, confidentially. “But don’t tell them. They should know that I’m here pulling for them the whole time.”

Rebecca’s most emotionally expressive moment of the day occurs while they’re waiting to be called onstage. On the monitor, they can see the opening segments of the program. The first three guests are young women who’ve donated eggs. The audience is spiked with friends and relatives of the donors, egg recipients and a busload of fundamentalist Christians who raise a ruckus about biotechnological tampering being anti-Scripture. A middle-aged black woman with five children casts the first stone, opining that “If God wanted you to have children, your body would be ready and susceptible to have them.”

Rebecca’s feelings about UCI’s alleged mishandling of her genetic material may be murky and abstract, but the pain of her childlessness is not. She turns to me, points at the monitor and says, “The biggest critic of people like us is people who’ve got a ton of kids. You know, what do they care?” She begins to sniffle. “They don’t know what it’s like to be childless.” Turning back to the monitor, she lets loose with a heartfelt, though indiscreet, “‘F--- you.”

*

Two commercial breaks, one fertility doctor with a book to plug and many contentious audience members later, the Robinsons are summoned onstage.

They have had plenty of time to acclimate to the roving cameras, harsh lights, vibrant stage colors and, most daunting, the keyed-up studio audience that’s horseshoed around them. The pair is ignored for most of the segment, the majority of which is taken up with religious sniping. Finally, Gibbons introduces them. They hold hands (Ready’s suggestion), framed in a two-shot, as Gibbons asks, “Is it possible that these eggs have been sold or stolen and given to someone else to have your child?”

Rebecca’s talked about her harvesting dozens of times. She speaks smoothly, modestly, in a quavering voice that lends dignity and poignancy to her answer.

“This is so unconscionable!” Gibbons declares. “Did they not tell you what your options were? I mean, these aren’t extraneous body parts. These are potential children!”

Rebecca says she wasn’t informed that they had the option of donating, destroying or freezing their embryos until her final harvesting. It’s possible that some of those embryos were given to other couples who then gave birth.

Gibbons leans forward, segueing into her trump. “What would you do, Rebecca, if you found out that that had occurred?”

“If a child resulted from one of my embryos, he or she would be 4 or 5 years old by now,” she answers, her face in a tight close-up. “And you have to think of the children. You can’t just take the child away from the only parents its ever known.”

“A mom, yeah,” Gibbons says, to thunderous applause. “A mom would think of the children.”

“With all that’s happened,” Gibbons asks Cliff, “do you think you would still use the technology to try and create your dream?”

“We would,” he says, adding that he had no problems with the procedure, only that the doctors were doing things “under the table.” He concludes: “I feel there should be more regulation, more restraints, more control over what’s going on.”

“Absolutely!” Gibbons concurs, to even louder applause. Then, off to another commercial. Next, a silver-haired woman in the audience uses the Robinsons’ tragedy as a launch pad for a jeremiad about “God’s plan,” attacking the “trivialization of human life” that occurs when it is created in a petri dish. This show is essentially pitting two emotionally charged groups against each other: couples who want babies at any cost versus those who look upon egg donations with apocalyptic horror.

After that, the Robinsons aren’t acknowledged. In the final segment, after Smith, Nathan and the twins come onstage, Rebecca gets the mike one last time. “I take personal offense when people say, ‘Well, if you’re unable to have children, then maybe that’s the way it’s meant to be,’ ” she says, practically snarling. “I’ve never heard that come out of the mouth of somebody who doesn’t have any children. Everybody I’ve ever heard that from has four or five kids of their own.” The pro-donation portion of the audience applauds.

Gibbons, however, is ready to move on. “Shelly and Reid--I think that’s a very good point, Rebecca--Shelly and Reid, in your case, with your egg donor. . . “ The Robinsons sit in their low, cushiony chairs and wait for the show to end. Finally, the theme music dies, the studio monitors go black and the audience files out. “‘Egg Donors: Creating Life or Controversy” is in the can.

Backstage, Cliff says, “We didn’t say enough.” Still, he adds, “I felt that the program really brought the point to light.”

“We have to get out of here,” Rebecca interjects. “‘I think they want the rooms.” The Robinsons gather up their belongings and exit through the backstage door. Meanwhile, the “Leeza” show prepares to tape its second show of the day--women married to cross-dressers. Now occupying the Robinsons’ dressing room is “Shirley,” a burly Amazon in a slinky dress and five o’clock shadow. Gibbons is cooing over him.

“Oh, really! I mean, look at you!” she trills.

Outside, the Robinsons, having endured their trial by media, glow with relief. “It’s been a fun day,” Rebecca says, ensconced in the plush back seat, clutching her “Leeza” T-shirt and fanny pack. I ask the couple what they plan to do now that the ordeal is over. “I don’t know. Have dinner,” Rebecca says, smiling.

Cliff leans back in the adjacent seat. “I don’t think the ordeal--as you call it--is over,” he comments, his voice calm and measured, his eyes concealed behind Wayfarer shades. “I think it’s just begun.”