The Bling Ring (6 page)

There was Paris Hilton, whose “heiress” background was the premise for her reality show
The Simple Life
(2003–2007), in which she and her friend Nicole Richie invaded the lives of working-class people and made fools of themselves and their hosts. There was Lindsay Lohan, famous since the age of eleven, who had appeared in a movie,
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
(2004), about a girl who is consumed with wanting to become a famous actress. And there was Rachel Bilson, who had starred on
The O.C.
, about rich kids in Newport Beach, California. (Josh Schwartz, who created the show, now had another hit with
Gossip Girl
, about rich kids in New York.)

The Bling Ring had also burglarized the home of Brian Austin Green, who had starred in the 1990s teen drama
Beverly Hills, 90210
, about rich kids in Beverly Hills. Their real target in hitting Green was his girlfriend (now wife), actress Megan Fox, who had co-starred with Lohan in
Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen
, playing a rich mean girl. Then there was Audrina Patridge of
The Hills
, a reality show about rich girls trying to find themselves in L.A. Spencer Pratt, another regular on the show, was apparently also a target, but the Bling Ring was busted before it had a chance to rob him.

Rachel Lee and Diana Tamayo allegedly fled from the home of
High School Musical
star Ashley Tisdale in July 2009 after encountering her housekeeper at the front door (Tisdale was in Hawaii). The
High School Musical
phenomenon hit when the Bling Ring kids were entering high school. The first installment in the three-part Disney franchise appeared in 2006. Although it was geared more toward tweens, no one could escape the hype, which made stars of newcomers Tisdale, Zac Efron, and Vanessa Hudgens (all three were Bling Ring targets, although none was ever successfully burglarized). The squeaky-clean movies, shot in squeaky-clean Salt Lake City, are about high school kids vying for roles in a high school musical, but their true message is about the thrill of fame. Tisdale's character, Sharpay Evans, a spoiled rich girl seemingly modeled after Paris Hilton (she's a platinum diva who carries a lapdog), announces she will “bop to the top” and have only “fabulous” things in her life. The final number of the first
High School Musical
movie declares, “We're all stars.”

And then there was Miley Cyrus, another target on the Bling Ring's list. Her wildly popular tween comedy,
Hannah Montana
, ran on the Disney Channel from 2006 to 2011. It was, famously, about a high school girl who lives a double life as a famous pop star. Miley the regular teen has dark hair, while Hannah the celebrity dons a platinum wig and flashier clothes.
“You get the limo out front,”
Cyrus sang in the show's theme song.
“Yeah, when you're famous it can be kinda fun.”
Hannah Montana
attracted more 6-to-14-year-old viewers than any other show on cable, and 164 million viewers worldwide.

A study of the effect of celebrity culture on the values held by kids found that the TV shows most popular with 9-to-11-year-olds have “fame” as their number one value, above “self-acceptance” and “community feeling.” “Fame” ranked number 15 in 1997. “Community feeling” was number one in 1967. I searched YouTube for a typical episode of
The Andy Griffith Show
from that year, and found one that showed Aunt Bee fretting over the responsibilities of jury duty (and mind you, this show was a big hit). Meanwhile, a typical episode of
Hannah Montana
from 2009 has Hannah fretting over her overbooked schedule—how will she juggle a concert and a radio show? Or for older kids, there was a 2008 episode of
Entourage
in which Vince the movie star (played by Adrian Grenier) worries over whether he should take a part in a movie, and what it will do for his image.

But it may be too easy to blame pop culture and the media for promoting the “value” of fame. Movies and TV shows and popular music are often more of a reflection than an engine of cultural trends. I think when we talk about the obsession with fame, we're also talking about an obsession with wealth. Rich and famous, famous and rich—they seem connected as aspirations. Interviewing teenagers over the years, I've often heard them talk about wanting to be famous, but almost always in the context of being rich and the “lifestyle” fame ushers in. “Lifestyle” is a word that comes up a lot. “We put them up in the nicest hotels,” said
X Factor
judge Demi Lovato of the contestants on the show, “because we want them to get a taste of the lifestyle that fame can bring them.” (Sadly for Lovato and also former
X Factor
judge Britney Spears, “the lifestyle” of fame has also included time in rehab, where they both landed in 2010 and 2007, respectively.) When the kids in the Starbucks at the Commons in Calabasas started talking about fame, they immediately started talking about money. It's striking that while there seems to be much consternation about kids wanting to be famous, there seems to be little concern about them wanting to be rich.

America has always offered a dream of wealth; in “the land of opportunity,” anyone who is willing to work hard can make a good life for himself and his family. But the idea of what constitutes a good life hasn't always included private planes and 50,000-square-foot homes and $100,000 watches and $20,000 handbags. We are living in a new Gilded Age, with a “totally new stratosphere” of financial success.
¹

As we've become aware in the national conversation about the one percent, income inequality has increased dramatically since the late 1970s. Then, the top 1 percent of Americans earned only about 10 percent of the national income; now they earn a third. In terms of total wealth, they control about 40 percent. Meanwhile the 99 percent has been going into debt trying to keep up with the newly extravagant lifestyle the one percent inhabits.

“While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall,” wrote Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz in
Vanity Fair
in 2011. “All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top.” At the same time, Stiglitz wrote, “People outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real.”

When rich people started having more money—a lot more money—they started coming up with bigger and fancier ways of spending it. The explosion in demand for high-end consumer goods has been called “the luxury revolution,” although it's anything but revolutionary. Tom Wolfe's
The Bonfire of the Vanities
(1987) was a scathing look at the materialistic (and ultimately criminal) culture created by Wall Street players like his main character, Sherman McCoy. But while yuppies might have been portrayed as loathsome in movies like
Wall Street
, they had stuff, and their stuff was coveted. A bemused Michael Douglas said in a 2012 interview that young men routinely come up to him and say, “Gordon Gekko! You're my hero! You're the reason I went to Wall Street!”—as if
Wall Street
were an inspirational film rather than a cautionary tale about a financial crook.

Greed was suddenly good, so was shopping. In the wake of 9/11, then President George W. Bush elevated it to a patriotic act. (“Some don't want to go shopping,” after the terrorist attack, Bush said. “That should not and that will not stand in America.”) Carrie Bradshaw of
Sex and the City
became our lovable over-spender, trolling for Manolos she couldn't afford in between too many cosmopolitans. The show, which ran from 1998 to 2004, and could be credited with mainstreaming a familiarity with designer brands, became very popular among tween and teenage girls, who took to showing off their hauls from shopping expeditions in online “haul vlogs.”
Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?
(1999–2013) another popular show asked. Well, who didn't? “Everyone wants to be rich,” said David Siegel, the private timeshare mogul profiled in the documentary
The Queen of Versailles
(2012). “If they can't be rich, the next best thing is to feel rich.”

By the 1980s, there weren't songs on the radio anymore about loving your fellow human beings.
“Come on, people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now,”
sang the Youngbloods in 1967.
“People all over the world, join hands, start a love train,”
crooned the O'Jays in 1973. Now there were songs about loving yourself—and stuff. There was Madonna singing about being “a material girl,” “living in the material world.” There was Puff Daddy, in the 1990s, rapping,
“It's all about the Benjamins, baby.”
In 2008, the R&B group Little Jackie proclaimed,
“The world should revolve around me.”
Jay-Z goes by the nickname “Hova”—as in Jehovah—and calls himself “the eighth wonder of the world.” The shift in values could be seen on television, too. There weren't shows about poor families anymore, like
Good Times
(1974–1979) or
The Waltons
(1972–1981)—there were shows about rich people,
Dynasty
(1981–1989) and
Dallas
(1978–1991) and, of course,
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
.

Lifestyles
had a long run, from 1984 to 1995, and its impact was enormous. Now regular people could see what it was like to be rich from the inside—and they wanted it. “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” (1996) by rappers Kool G Rap and DJ Polo, trumpeted the delights of having a “yacht that makes the Love Boat look like a life raft.” Quite a change from the Intruders' 1974 anthem, “Be Thankful for What You Got.”

When I got a chance to talk to Nick Prugo and asked him why he thought Rachel Lee was so obsessed with their famous victims that she would steal their clothes, he said, “I think she just wanted to be part of the lifestyle. Like, the lifestyle that everybody kind of wants.”

7

When you drive up to the address of Indian Hills, the first thing you see is another school, Agoura High; the two schools share a campus. Agoura is a bustling, idyllic sort of American high school, very proud of its Chargers football team. It sits in a large tan brick building with a parking lot full of luxury cars, shiny BMWs, Audis, and SUVs.

Indian Hills, which has less than 100 students, resides at the back, in several prefab buildings, like the ones used as offices at construction sites. It has as its logo the uncomfortable image of an Indianhead, and, hidden at the back of the compound as it is, it has the feeling of being stuck on a reservation.

The two girls I met in the parking lot were seniors at the school. They said they'd rather not use their real names, as they “didn't want to get involved.” They chose the names “Monica” and “Ashley.” They were wearing low-slung jeans, tight long-sleeved Ts and a lot of dark eye makeup. Monica was smoking.

We went and sat on the bleachers of the playing field, which was empty except for a couple boys running around the track. Monica said she was sent to Indian Hills for “drugs”; Ashley because “I have trouble learning.”

“She was toootally into herself,” said Monica.

“Oh, I liked Rachel,” said Ashley. “She could be sweet.”

Monica raised an eyebrow. “Sweet? You mean
mean,
” she said.

They said they knew Rachel Lee, Nick Prugo, and Diana Tamayo, having gone to school with the older kids before they graduated in 2008. “Everybody knew what they were doing”—that is, burglarizing the homes of celebrities, said Monica.

“They bragged about it. At parties and stuff,” said Ashley.

“Most people didn't believe it,” Monica said. “People thought they were just talking shit.”

I asked them why no one ever reported it to the police.

Monica made a face. “You don't do that. They would wear like, Paris Hilton's stuff, and
say
they were wearing it. I would have sold that shit.”

TMZ would post a picture of Nick wearing a “P” necklace allegedly belonging to Hilton; across the picture Nick had scrawled, Perez Hilton–style, “Hey Paris, look familiar?”

“Rachel had really nice clothes,” said Ashley. “Everyone else would be dressed, like, casually, in jeans and shorts, and she would be wearing like some designer top and heels. She looked like a celebrity. She looked like someone in a magazine.”

“Yeah,
Burglars' Magazine
,” said Monica.

“Prugo stated that Lee was the driving force of the burglary crew and that her motivation was based in her desire to own the designer wardrobes of the Hollywood celebrities that she admired,” said the LAPD's report.

I asked the girls if they knew how Rachel afforded her stylish wardrobe. “A lot of people in this area have money,” Monica said, shrugging.

“She acted kind of spoiled,” said Ashley. “I heard she didn't get along with her mom but then she would have all this really nice stuff so I thought maybe her mom was trying to win her daughter by giving her stuff—I don't know. I heard she didn't like her stepfather. She had a really nice car, an Audi A4.”

“Rachel's a mean girl,” Monica said with a click of her tongue. “She was backstabby. When people say Nick was the ringleader, I don't believe it, 'cause he could never do that by himself. He was too nervous.”

I asked them about Diana Tamayo. “Always getting into fights,” Monica said. “She used to, like, yell at the Agoura Hills kids 'cause they act like we don't exist.”

The boys running around the track ran by.