Former Lisa Kline Employee Reveals Horrifying Paparazzi Tale

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

If you've ever wondering what it's like working at a boutique frequented by celebrities, turns out it can be really, really scary. Today, an employee of the now-shuttered Lisa Kline boutique on Robertson tells of nasty interactions with the paparazzi when working there as an assistant manager. Joanna Schroeder details how she was routinely threatened and screamed at, and how she had to take out a restraining order against one particularly terrifying pap. The drama started like this:

A high-profile actress who was in the middle of a love-life drama crossed the street into our store with a new guy, leaving a mob of paps salivating at the door. One particularly belligerent creep kept stepping deeper into the store, ignoring my requests to leave, until I got in his face and screamed "Get the hell out of the store! Now!"

He leaned over me, turned red with a rage I had never truly come face-to-face with in real life, and screamed, "FUCK YOU BITCH! I'll come back here and fuck you in your ass!"

Though Schroeder doesn't name any names, a quick Googling reveals that the actress was Mischa Barton and the photog was Todd Kevin Wallace, who was later charged for battery when attempting to take photos of Reese Witherspoon and her children at Disney. A few years after the Lisa Kline episode, he was found dead of unknown causes in his apartment. Yikes.
· It Happened to Me: I Was Stalked by a Member of the Paparazzi [xoJane]
· Paparazzi Flash New Audacity [LAT]
· Paparazzo Mystery Could Be Solved [LAT]