Housesitter or home wrecker?

When Sharon Oreck and her family went to Hawaii for a week in September, they left their Los Feliz home in the care of a 29-year-old musician. “In retrospect I would say he is identical to Eddie Haskell,” says Oreck, a writer and producer, “in the sense that when you meet him, he’s like, ‘What a lovely dress you’re wearing, Mrs. Cleaver.’ Heavy on the flattery.”

Still, Oreck felt OK about the arrangement, as he’d watched the house before, and the only problem had been some flowers left rotting in a vase.

This time, the flowers were fine. The flagstone steps, however, were splotched with red wine, there were beer cans in the foyer and, on the designer couch, a young woman slept. According to the contractor who walked in on the post-party scene, several guys were in the kitchen trying to figure out how to work the coffee maker and another girl, wrapped in a towel, popped out of the master bedroom, followed by the musician, looking sheepish.

Oreck says he was far from the worst housesitter she’s had.

“I wasn’t even upset; I’m so used to it,” she says. “I had a person who was actually bold enough to not only wear my Chanel suit, but bring it back in a dry-cleaning bag the day after I got home. One girl, I came home and my underpants were in the dryer. I’m like, ‘You wore my underpants?’ ”

Hiring a housesitter can be just one more item on the to-do list for people going on an extended vacation or having to work on location. Yes, family can be entreated, or an out-of-town friend invited, but most people ready to be roped into watching a house are not such a known entity -- plus, they’re young, new to town or without funds for their own places.

Though a homeowner might logically surmise, as Oreck did, that someone who lives with their parents or has a tiny apartment would think getting a house with a pool for free is “a pretty good deal,” they fail to take into account the giddy amnesia that can set in when someone accustomed to sleeping on a friend’s couch is presented with the keys to the castle. This is when otherwise stand-up folks are seduced into believing that the pool, the pets, the panties are actually theirs. It’s fun to play dress-up and, anyway, who’s going to know? Or, to paraphrase the tree-falls-in-the-forest adage: If you wear someone’s Chanel suit but she doesn’t actually see you wear it, have you actually worn it?

Of course, a little luxury is never enough, especially on someone else’s dime. “I usually just hire whoever I have baby-sitting to watch the house,” says Lucy Dahl, a writer who lives in a large Victorian home in Hancock Park. “It usually works out, but one time I had a girl who thought my housekeeper was her servant. She sat around all day watching TV and left her dirty dishes in the sink. I fired her as soon as I got back.”

In a town where the chasm between the haves and the want-to-haves is probably wider and certainly more in-your-face than in most places, it is almost inevitable that when a homeowner says, “I am going to (Australia, Tokyo, Mexico) to make a film with (Keanu Reeves, Bill Murray, Salma Hayek); here are the keys to my house,” the housesitter hears, “He’s going to hang out with movie stars and make a ton of money. Ergo, he won’t even notice if I drink this bottle of 1992 Raymond Cabernet.”

Though the owner may not miss one bottle of wine, other evidence of foul play is undeniable. When Deborah Levin and her boyfriend went to Costa Rica for two weeks, they asked a neighbor with house guests of her own if she wanted to stay in their Santa Monica Craftsman home and watch their dog.

“She neglected to tell me she was already watching two other dogs, so she moves into our house with her dog and two more,” says Levin, an artists’ representative. “Then her girlfriend comes from San Francisco with her two dogs. I had a kennel in my house.

“My housekeeper, who is family to me, came while we were away, and apparently when she saw the house she broke down in tears, it was so disgusting. And the girlfriend says to her, ‘Clean it, it’s your job, you’re the maid.’ Not only this, but my dog wasn’t even there when I got home. It turns out she ran away from home, to a neighbor’s; she just couldn’t take it.”

Levin had a similar experience last Labor Day. “I asked a kid home from college to hang out and walk the dog and feed our kitten,” she says. “When we got home, the stench was unbelievable.... The rug was utterly trashed; we literally rolled it up and threw it out. There was no food in the dishes, no water in the bowls. And the saddest thing was, there were the kitten’s little paw prints on the toilet, because it had been trying to get water. When I confronted the kid, he was like, ‘Really?’ ”

“I have often said, in our business, there is a distinct reverse age discrimination,” says Gary Dunn, publisher of the Caretaker Gazette, which runs ads for those who need homes sat and those looking to sit them. “In my 21 years in the business, I have heard some of the worst stories about theft, vandalism and maintenance. Most of the perpetrators are young, single men.

“A homeowner runs an ad, they get a guy they think sounds great -- and then the trouble begins, particularly if it’s a longer assignment: The owners may be overseas, and when they check in, no one’s ever there. So they get someone to go over, and the place is empty; the guy has moved in with his girlfriend, or just disappeared.

“The next time the owners travel, they’ll put out an ad that reads, ‘Mature couple wanted.’ They never want to hear from young people again.”

Dunn says he gets more listings from California than anyplace else. “Particularly the Bay Area and Los Angeles, because there are a lot of wealthy people who tend to have multiple properties, who travel a lot, who have pets and plants that have to be left behind. We have celebrities and well-known people who subscribe because they don’t like to advertise, as well as a lot of young people with stars in their eyes who’ll go back to Iowa in a few years, but in the meantime, they need a place to stay.”

Dunn’s biggest competitor is not, he says, other publications but word of mouth. There’s also the phenomenally popular online site craigslist.org, which gets a half-billion page views per month, including housing opportunities in dozens of cities in the U.S. and overseas.

Of course, traumas can also befall those left in charge, such as when a housesitting friend of Dahl’s found the owners’ dog and two cats in the garden, legs up and stiff; they’d eaten a new snail poison laid down by a gardener. “It wasn’t the poor girl’s fault, of course,” says Dahl, “but she still had to call the owners overseas and tell them, ‘Your beloved pets are dead.’ ” And there is Sarah Knowles, a production designer from New York who lived in a fellow designer’s Miracle Mile home. “She was on location in New York, and left her Jack Russell terrier, which the contractors inadvertently let out,” says Knowles. “Even though it wasn’t my fault, I felt completely responsible. I was so petrified, I had the entire art department of [the film] ‘The Astronaut’s Wife’ posting on the Web and papering the neighborhood.” The dog was found, two months later, at a pound in South-Central L.A.

Though not everyone experiences such “thank goodness!” relief, some, like Oreck, eventually find some succor. After her house was put back in order, she telephoned the musician. “I said, ‘So, why’d you have a party at my house?’ I led off with a confrontational approach, and that worked pretty well. He said, ‘I’m really sorry about that, but I played with my band and then they wanted to come over afterward, and so, it just got out of hand.’ ”

Oreck says next time she leaves town she’ll think about leaving the house empty, and chocks up her experiences to the sitters’ immaturity, with a caveat. “The minute they come in your home, they feel like it’s their parents’ home, and think it’s daring and cool to pull one more semi-rebellious act. But I mean, when you’re 30 years old, you should know better.”

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Before you hand over your keys ... You’ve made your travel plans and think you’ve found someone responsible to watch your home in your absence. Feeling squeamish? Here are a few tips for peace of mind.Before you hand over your keys ...

You’ve made your travel plans and think you’ve found someone responsible to watch your home in your absence. Feeling squeamish? Here are a few tips for peace of mind.

Do your due diligence: Ask for the names and phone numbers of two former employers as well as two personal references, and, even if it feels a little invasive, call. Any red flags, take a pass. Make a copy of the housesitter’s driver’s license; if he or she doesn’t have a license, make a copy of a recent photograph.

Do your part: Leave the names and numbers of people to be contacted in case of an emergency, including plumber, electrician, handyman and a trusted friend. This way, if there’s a clogged pipe, you won’t come home to a $700 bill because the housesitter didn’t know whom else to call.

Put it in writing: Even if you’re going to be gone only a week, draw up a contract that clearly states what’s expected and have both parties sign it. It can be as simple as the dates you’ll be gone and the housesitter’s duties, such as “water plants” and “feed pets.”

Get bonded: “If you have a multimillion-dollar mansion full of antiques, you probably want to get the housesitter bonded,” says Gary Dunn, publisher of the Caretaker Gazette. Bonding is essentially an insurance policy for the housesitter, available through your insurance company. Thus, should you come home to find both the housesitter and your jewelry gone, the insurance company will reimburse you for the latter.

Go for the old: Dunn says most of his clients prefer to hire “retired people, because with maturity, there are just less fly-by-night rip-off artists.”

Dig deeper: Hire a company to do a background check, something Dunn recommends. “There are so many companies these days that do background and screening checks; they’re easy to find on the Internet. Such services include credit, security and criminal records. It’s probably worth your while to spend a couple of hundred dollars to do a background check, especially if you’ll be gone for an extended period of time.”

-- Nancy Rommelmann