Big Brother stalker

I've been lucky enough that I have never had a true stalker. However, it did seem to come pretty close while I was working on "Big Brother 5."

While on BB5, I was working on "the twist," which, if you watched the show that season, was two-fold. The first was that we reunited a long lost half brother and sister. The second was the twins that switched in and out of the house. I was part of the group that cast those people, as well as the other twins in the house. The original intent was to get 2-3 sets of people who had been separated by adoption (ideally a child/parent duo) and see how long it took before they figured out who the other was.

Our project was shrouded by secrecy. No one else in the office knew exactly what the project was. Many people in the office didn't even know we were working for Big Brother. The project was on a need-to-know basis. Because of that, we used all sorts of subterfuge when interviewing potential house guests. One of our producers even used a different name.

Because of the secrecy involved, I did not have direct telephone contact with anyone - all my contact was done via email. I would contact people and post ads, looking for people who wanted to be reunited with the child they gave up for adoption, the parents they never knew they had, or even a sibling who was placed in a different foster home. I would sort out who we could move on to the "next level" and put through to the senior producers. One of the biggest challenges was getting these people to trust me. They had often times been lied to for much of their lives, and were untrusting of sharing their personal information with a complete stranger.

One person started some vicious rumor that we were a scam, and that we were asking for money (we obviously weren't) and were demanding bank account info before we would help.

One day, my cell phone rang. I never gave out a phone number as, officially, we didn't exist in the office, and therefore there were only 3 private, secured phone lines which were useable for our project. The woman on the other line knew my name, my address, my father's name, and all sorts of other info about me. She sounded... not irate, but stern, almost like she was my mother, telling me that she got my email and she wanted to check up on me to make sure I was legit.

Turns out she worked at a credit card company, and had used her employer's database to look up all my information. I was too shocked to say much to her, but my producer was with me at the time, and was alarmed. The moment I hung up the phone I told him what happened and he immediately called our private investigator who handled the situation. I don't know what came of it, but he said that he could have her fired for misusing company information. I hope he did.