PHONEY WORLD OF DOC HOLLYWOOD; SCANDAL THAT ROCKED THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE ... HOW PLAYBOY PLASTIC SURGEON LET GIRL ASSISTANT OPERATE ON HIS FAMOUS PATIENTS.

SCALPEL gripped firmly in hand, the masked surgeon makes the first delicate cut into a sleeping patient's face.

It is just another routine plastic surgery operation in Hollywood.

But this one is different. The woman behind the mask is certainly not a surgeon. She isn't even a nurse.

Kim Moore Mestas is a lowly theatre scrub assistant and the closest she should have come to the surgeon's tools is when she's cleaning them.

Kim is one of four former employees who have turned on America's most famous plastic surgeon Dr Steven Hoefflin - better known in celebrity circles as Doc Hollywood.

The 52-year-old multi-millionaire, who used to dole out collagen injections to guests at parties, stands accused of ridiculing and fondling film stars while they lay naked on his operating table. Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson and Don Johnson were all mocked, according to his assistants.

And in one incident, Slyvester Stallone is said to have walked in while he was performing surgery on his then girlfriend Angie Everhart. Colleagues say he demanded she be given bigger breasts, "big but perky, kinda like a 17-year-old" - and Hoefflin agreed, against her wishes.

But new allegations by Kim Moore Mestas is stunning Hollywood. In a statement to the Los Angeles Superior Court, she told how patients were operated on by other staff when they thought they were paying for Hoefflin's services.

Kim, who worked for the doctor for more than nine years, and fellow employees told in court papers how Hoefflin would stay with patients until they were knocked unconscious.

He would then slip out for a free meal at the hospital canteen or buy gossip magazines while others performed the operations.

They said it was difficult to explain to patients why the shape and size of stitches on their wounds differed. They claimed it was often because different people had done the stitching.

Kim told how Hoefflin, who clients have also included Tony Curtis and Ivana Trump, disrobed patient Emelia Crowe when she was unconscious and laughed at the way she had shaved her pubic hair. She also witnessed several bungled operations which she claimed Hoefflin could have prevented.

Between 1989 and 1993, Kim said she stitcheded many face and breast cases. She said: "Dr Hoefflin remarked that I demonstrated greater prowess in closing superficial face wounds than him.

"He said that since he possessed a medical license and I worked under his supervision, I could do whatever he requested."

Kim, who stopped working for Hoefflin in August 1995, said he performed so many operations each day that he'd sometimes run out of beds. Patients, who often paid $450 a night, were put next to waste bins in the hall to make room.

But she said he only did this with patients who were unable to see. "He would put patients who had undergone eyelid surgery or facelifts there, since their eyelids would be sutured shut to prevent their eyes from drying out."

She also claimed medical-strength cocaine was constantly going missing during her time at the clinic.

Her evidence was taken on the orders of a judge as part of an investigation by the Californian Medical Board and has rocked the beauty-obsessed community where Hoefflin made his name. Model Carrie Leigh, who lived with Playboy king Hugh Hefner for five years, said she believes the damning claims.

The former Playboy Playmate helped establish Doc Hollywood but has also given evidence against him to the California Medical Board.

She revealed how he turned up at a party with a syringe of collagen and performed on-the-spot beauty treatments for guests in the bathroom. He also boasted how he was taking a steroid which would allow him to live to 200.

Carrie, who introduced Hoefflin to Hollywood, said: "I once trusted Steve and regarded him as a close friend but he is a changed man and deserves to be found out."

"The man you see now is not the man I used to know. He thinks he is God," she said.

Carrie first met Hoefflin at one of Hefner's parties at the Playboy mansion. She asked him to boost her breasts for a photoshoot.

"He later did another boob job and a nose job. I also had collagen injections and skin peels. Because I was Hef's girlfriend, a lot of other girls wanted to copy me to please Hef and I'd recommend Hoefflin.

"He operated on scores of them. He was soon the toast of all the parties. Beautiful people love to be with someone who can make them more beautiful."

She said Hoefflin's favourite party trick was to hand out free collagen injections.

"He obviously sneaked out the syringe from the hospital and he did a few girls in the toilet, injecting collagen into their wrinkles."

She claimed one Playboy executive sat on the toilet seat while Hoefflin injected the lines around her mouth.

Carrie said: "When Michael Jackson latched onto him that was his big ticket. He would often turn up at the Playboy mansion in the early hours of the morning with Jacko in tow. He would tell everyone who he had done what to.

"Jacko ignored the girls and spent most of his time wandering around the grounds. He said he wanted to make Neverland like the Playboy mansion."

Carrie was so close to Hoefflin that she forgave him when he botched surgery on her nose and left her blind in one eye.

"I went for surgery at his clinic and I woke up in hospital. I couldn't see out of my right eye and a liquid he injected into me to soften old scar tissue had gone behind my eye.

"I think Steve was as scared as I was. I was crying, he was crying. If I had been a normal client, I would have sued but he was my friend and Hef didn't want the publicity."

Carrie, who now only has about 65 per cent vision in that eye, says she was even drafted in as an auxiliary nurse to help out at some of the operations.

"I would look after some of the Playboy girls in the spare bedrooms of the Playboy mansion after their boob jobs.

"I would administer their painkillers, clean their wounds and change their drip bags. It was disgusting, really."

But she started to see a difference in Hoefflin before she left Hefner and sued him for palimony.

"Hef said we had been invited over to Steve's to see a movie but it was a film called Faces Of Death.

"It showed real torture and executions. Steve got a great kick out of it. He raved about the tape and said he loved blood and gore."

When Carrie left Hefner and moved to New York, she lost touch with Hoefflin but she stopped by his Santa Monica office a few years later to complain that her breast implants were now sore and painful.

"I was really surprised and almost didn't recognise him. His slim face was bloated and he looked really old.

"I said I was married with a young daughter but it was almost as if he didn't know me. Like we had never been friends.

"What he did next was really weird. He got some cream for my boobs and started to caress them with my husband and daughter watching. He said he was showing me how to rub the cream in but it didn't feel like a doctor's touch.

"He gave my husband a strange look, like he was saying, `These are my boobs, I created them and can do what I like with them'.

"I can't imagine the Hoefflin I once knew doing these horrible things to his patients. But the Hoefflin I saw then was a very different man."

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Author:	SMITH, From KEVIN
Publication:	Sunday Mirror (London, England)
Date:	Feb 21, 1999
Words:	1290
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