Finished by a Photo?

Until last week, Patricia Tehaney always considered being Playboy’s Miss May 1976 centerfold an asset.

Her appearance in the magazine two decades ago--leaning against a pinball machine, clad only in knee-high python-skin boots--was something she considered a dream come true for a 19-year-old California girl.

But Tehaney, now 39, says that asset turned into a liability last week when she was fired from her job as an office manager for Hydrex Pest Control in Santa Barbara. According to Tehaney’s account--which her former employers dispute vehemently--she was terminated because her centerfold past resurfaced in a commemorative $50 coffee table book.

Her attorney, Oxnard-based Greg Ramirez, said Wednesday that he plans to file claims with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing on Tehaney’s behalf by the end of the week.

“She’s obviously, from what she has told us, been discriminated against,” Ramirez said.

Tehaney, who lives at Silver Strand beach in Oxnard, said she told her employers when she was hired in October that she had once graced the pages of Playboy and that a book compiling five decades of Playboy centerfolds was about to be published, featuring her and 500 other nude and nearly nude women.

She said she was told not to speak about the centerfold or the book to anyone because the company had strict rules against sexual harassment and didn’t want any trouble.

But she said that her immediate supervisor expressed an interest in seeing the original centerfold and that she reluctantly brought it in.

“I felt like, maybe I better,” she said Wednesday. “I really wanted to keep my job.”

She said he looked at it, put it in a drawer and then gave it back to her at the end of the day. When the book “Playboy Magazine: Five Decades of Centerfolds” was released in early November, Tehaney said the general manager of the firm, Ron Grinham, called her in and told her she was being fired.

“You violated our trust,” she said he told her. “You told people about Playboy.”

Tehaney said she was reminded of the firm’s strict guidelines on sexual harassment and told she presented too much of a risk for Hydrex. She said she offered to sign a waiver promising not to sue for sexual harassment, but was told that that wouldn’t do and that she was “not up to par.”

“I do not understand why they fired the potential victim in this case,” she said.

Grinham said Wednesday that he could not discuss the reason for Tehaney’s firing, citing the need for confidentiality on personnel matters. But he said her Playboy centerfold had nothing to do with it.

“That is not the reason,” Grinham said. “There is absolutely no way that she was terminated for anything even like that.”

It is true that the company has strict policies against having materials in the office that could be construed as sexual harassment, he said. Tehaney could have been warned of that policy when she was hired, he said.

“I don’t know that a comment might have been made,” he said.

But he said Tehaney’s past was not an issue.

“That is the lady’s private life and we don’t care,” Grinham said.

Bill Farley, director of communications for Playboy Enterprises, said magazine officials were amazed to learn of Tehaney’s story.

“We think it is incredible that something legal which this woman did in her private life, and moreover something she did 20 years ago, should have any bearing on her ability to fulfill the responsibilities of her current employment,” Farley said.

Playboy will keep an eye on the case, Farley said.

Ramirez said he believes he has a strong case.

“If you took this to its logical conclusion,” he said, “why not just have a policy that says we just won’t hire women because we don’t want to have sexual harassment suits?”

Tehaney still gets a little dreamy-eyed as she relates the story of how she became a Playboy centerfold. She was 19, a skinny girl with long brown hair, hanging out at a club in Los Angeles when Playboy founder Hugh Hefner dropped in, took a look at her and invited her to dinner at his famous mansion. She was soon living at the mansion’s guest house, she said, and her centerfold, as well as her appearance on several Playboy covers and pictorials, helped boost her self-confidence.

“It meant that I wasn’t the skinny, ugly little kid I was in high school,” she said. “It was an honor.”

Now, facing a holiday season without an income, Tehaney is visiting the unemployment office and various temporary agencies. She said she is so terrified of running out of money that she would consider taking her old job back if it were offered.

“You know what?” she said. “I need to eat.”