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Magazine Serves as Memorial to Slain Model Sobek

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

The glossy magazine is anything but the typical posthumous tribute. But considering that Linda Sobek was a model, and given the media attention surrounding her death, perhaps a retrospective of her work was inevitable.

“Linda Sobek: Death of Our Model” is a 46-page remembrance of the Hermosa Beach woman who was found in a shallow grave in November after she failed to return from a modeling assignment. A Hollywood photographer has been charged with her murder.

The magazine contains biographical information, quotes from Sobek and her friends, and page after page of the bikini-clad model frolicking on the beach, lounging by the pool, soaking up the California sun.

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The publisher, Brian Ashley, said the magazine is a sincere effort to celebrate Sobek’s life and work and to offer her fans a lasting collection of photographs.

“It’s the only kind [of memorial] we were capable of,” said Ashley, who took most of the photographs for a magazine he publishes called Swimsuit Posters. Such recognition “is certainly something she was striving for, among other things. She would have liked it.”

Sobek’s family agrees, and has given the project their blessing.

What better way to honor her daughter, said Elaine Sobek. “She was a model. She was a bathing suit model.”

A favorite among readers of Swimsuit Posters, Sobek appeared in 20 issues between the late 1980s and 1995, Ashley said. As with all featured models, she was asked to submit information about herself for the publications, and the tribute magazine draws from those questionnaires to share her likes, dislikes and dreams.

“I am a very health-oriented person--I love to train at Gold’s Gym,” Sobek wrote. “I love eating healthy--you can find me at Chin Chin all the time! My cat Boo is my best friend! I love my family very, very much! But, I’m also daring too--I get crazy a lot and I party a little! I just want to be happy and surrounded by my family and friends forever.”

Ashley said he began putting together the magazine shortly after photographer Charles Rathbun led investigators to Sobek’s body in the Angeles National Forest. Rathbun, who had hired her for a shoot with a new Lexus sport utility vehicle, has pleaded not guilty to killing and sexually assaulting the model.

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Ashley stressed during an interview that he was trying to honor Sobek’s memory, not exploit her death. Not only was the family consulted each step of the way, but Ashley said he knocked a dollar off the normal $4.99 price of his swimsuit magazines to demonstrate his good intentions.

The publication contains an advertisement for the Linda Sobek Family Fund, which Elaine Sobek said was set up to help the family cope with expenses that have come from the death of her daughter. Ashley declined to say whether any of the proceeds from sales of the magazine would go to the Sobek family.

Comments by Sobek, 27, and her model friends paint a portrait of a friendly, happy-go-lucky woman with few worries and the dream of becoming a Playboy playmate.

Her favorite car: the Porsche 911 Carrera. Her favorite color: hot pink. Her most prized possessions: “my cat Boo and my diamond ring.”

“I’m a very happy person,” she wrote. “I love life, I love my family, I love the beach and I want the world to be very happy!!!”

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