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St. Louis Paralegal Says She Was Fired For Her Nude Modeling Work | St. Louis Metro News | St. Louis

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click to enlarge BRADEN MCMAKIN Rachel Worcel was devastated to lose her job at the Simon Law Firm.

It was a big deal for Rachel Worcel when she was hired by the Simon Law Firm in St. Louis last month.

Worcel, 48, has been a paralegal since 1999, but joining the civil litigation firm felt like a significant step up. For the first time in her career she had her own office, in the firm’s headquarters right next to Busch Stadium. The sort of cases the firm worked on were bigger than at her previous employer (just last week the Simon Law Firm won a $745 million judgment stemming from a fatal automobile crash). The new job also came with a substantial raise.

click to enlarge BRADEN MCMAKIN Rachel Worcel holds the issue of Hustler that she was featured in.

“I was really excited,” Worcel tells the RFT.

Her first day went smoothly enough. But Worcel says she knew something was amiss by her second day there. She felt like she was being avoided.

That morning, an HR rep came into her office, sat down and said that they had to have a difficult conversation.

“She said that somebody sent us some disturbing images of you online,” Worcel recalls. “I stopped her and I’m like, ‘So I can’t work here?’”

In short order, the HR rep escorted Worcel out to her car and asked her to hand over her parking pass. Worcel says she felt “like a criminal.”

The Simon Law Firm told the RFT in a statement that they can’t comment on private personnel matters.

Worcel had done nothing illegal. In fact, she’s had a long second career moonlighting as a model, including in the pages of Hustler magazine as well as (twice) on the cover of the RFT. She’s also active on TikTok and Instagram.

Worcel was part of a Hustler “MILF mania” issue in April 2010. “I was the first official ‘MILF’ of Hustler magazine,” she says. “So that was kind of exciting.”

click to enlarge COURTESY RACHEL WORCEL Rachel Worcel shared this image as an example of her modeling work. She appeared on the cover of the RFT in 2008 and 2013, the later for a feature about area water parks ejecting women whose swimsuits were too revealing. (Worcel has never been ejected from a water park; she just helped illustrate the problem on our cover.)

“I did make some money, but not that much, honestly, with modeling. It was more just to create art,” she says. “I just kind of liked creating things.”

It was the desire to be engaged in the arts that drove Worcel to take up modeling relatively later than many others. She first posed for the camera in 2006 when she was 31, many years after she’d started working as a paralegal.

“It gave me life,” she says of her modeling. “I felt so alive doing it.”

Much of the content is racy, but in general Worcel’s body of work is much closer to being rated PG-13 than triple-X or even R.

She says she always took pains to keep the two aspects of her life separate.

“I didn’t tell anybody, because I don’t go around the office saying that stuff,” she says. “Like, I’m kind of embarrassed, honestly, in that environment.”

click to enlarge COURTESY OF RACHEL WORCEL Rachel Worcel shared this photo as an example of her modeling work.

Stories similar to Worcel’s have made headlines in recent years, with women in a wide variety of jobs — from auto mechanics to healthcare workers, Taco Bell employees to teachers — being fired for moonlighting in adult entertainment. Worcel says she feels like it’s hypocritical for an employer to fire an employee for no other reason than their adult content. “Do they look at pornography? Do they go to strip clubs?” she says of the people who fired her.

Worcel’s story is unique in that it’s also something of a mystery as to how the law firm that was briefly her employer became aware of her nude modeling.

Because, for decades, as part of Worcel’s efforts to keep her legal and her modeling lives separate, she has only modeled under the name Rachel Gunn. She has no idea who disclosed her modeling to the law firm, or how or why anyone went out of their way to sabotage her.

“I’m not sure who would recognize me,” she says. “I’m not sure how they made the connection of ‘Worcel’ to ‘Gunn.’”

Worcel says the law firm’s HR person told her that she had to be fired because there is an attorney on staff whose name is Gunn. Worcel says she couldn’t get much more of an explanation as to why that mattered, beyond being told the attorneys were worried about their reputations.

Worcel says the Simon Law Firm did give her two week’s pay as severance, and she was able to go back to the smaller firm where she’s been a paralegal since 2016. The salary isn’t as high, but she says she’s grateful to be there and likes her coworkers.

But the thought of not being able to advance in her career still stings. The past few weeks have been difficult. She hasn’t totally come to terms with what happened.

“I was computing how much I was able to save a month,” she says of her anticipation of the Simon Law Firm job. “I was really excited to finally have a little financial freedom, instead of living from paycheck to paycheck. I’m not allowed to do that now. I have to keep struggling.”

Worcel adds, “It feels like I’m wearing a scarlet letter.”

We welcome tips and feedback. Email the author at [email protected] or follow on Twitter at @RyanWKrull. Subscribe to Riverfront Times newsletters.Follow us: Apple News |  Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Or sign up for our RSS Feed

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Fenton Man Charged in Sword Attack on Roommate

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1 year ago

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May 22, 2024

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A warrant is out for a Fenton man’s arrest after he allegedly attacked his roommate with a sword. 

Police say that on Sunday, Angelus Scott spoke openly about “slicing his roommate’s head” before he grabbed a sword, raised it up and then swung it down at the roommate. 

The roommate grabbed Scott’s hand in time to prevent injury. When police arrived at the scene, they found the weapon used in the assault. 

The sword in question was a katana, which is a Japanese sword recognizable for its curved blade. 

This isn’t the first time a samurai-style sword has been used to violent effect in St. Louis. In 2018, a man hearing voices slaughtered his ex-boyfriend with a samurai sword. His mother said he suffered from schizoaffective disorder.

As for Scott, 35, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office was charged yesterday with two felonies, assault first degree and armed criminal action. The warrant for his arrest says he is to be held on $200,000 bond.

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Caught on Video, Sheriff Says He’s Ready to ‘Turn It All Over’ to Deputy

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1 year ago

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May 22, 2024

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Video of St. Louis Sheriff Vernon Betts taken by a former deputy suggests that the sheriff has a successor in mind to hand the reins of the department over to, even as Betts is in an increasingly heated campaign for reelection. 

“I ain’t here for all this rigmarole,” Betts says in the video while seated behind his desk at the Carnahan Courthouse. “The Lord sent me here to turn this department around and I’m doing the best I can and I think I’ve done a good job. I’ve got about eight months and I’m going to qualify for my fourth pension.”

He goes on, “Right now I can walk up out of here and live happily ever after and forget about all this…and live like a king.”

The sheriff then says his wife has been in Atlanta looking at houses and that the other deputy in the room, Donald Hawkins, is someone Betts has been training “to turn it all over to him.”

Asked about the video, Betts tells the RFT, “My future plans are to win reelection on August 6th by a wide margin and to continue my mission as the top elected law enforcement official to make St. Louis safer and stronger. Serving the people of St. Louis with integrity, honor and professional law enforcement qualifications is a sacred responsibility, and I intend to complete that mission.”

The video of Betts was taken by Barbara Chavers, who retired from the sheriff’s office in 2016 after 24 years of service. Chavers now works security at Schnucks at Grand and Gravois. Betts’ brother Howard works security there, too.

Chavers tells the RFT that she was summoned to Betts’ office last week after Betts’ brother made the sheriff aware that she was supporting Montgomery. It was no secret: Chavers had filmed a Facebook live video in which she said she was supporting Betts’ opponent Alfred Montgomery in the election this fall. “Make the judges safe,” she says in the video, standing in front of a large Montgomery sign on Gravois Avenue. “They need a sheriff who is going to make their courtrooms safe.”

In his office, even as Chavers made clear she was filming him, Betts told Chavers he was “flabbergasted” and “stunned” she was supporting Montgomery. 

“I don’t know what I did that would make you go against the preacher man,” he says, referring to himself. He then refers to Montgomery as “ungodly.” 

Betts goes on to say that not long ago, he was walking in his neighborhood on St. Louis Avenue near 20th Street when suddenly Montgomery pulled up in his car and, according to Betts, shouted, “You motherfucker, you this, you that. You’re taking my signs down.”

Montgomery tells the RFT that he’s never interacted with Betts outside of candidate forums and neighborhood meetings. 

“I don’t think anyone with good sense would do something like that to a sitting sheriff,” Montgomery says.

Montgomery has had campaign signs missing and on at least two occasions has obtained video of people tearing them down. (Chavers notes that the sign that she filmed her original Facebook video in front of is itself now missing.)

One man who lives near Columbus Square says that he recently put out two Montgomery signs, which later went missing. “If they keep taking them, I’ll keep putting them up,” he said. 

Betts says he has nothing to do with the missing signs. In the video Chavers filmed in Betts’ office, Betts says that his campaign isn’t in a spot where it needs to resort to tearing down opponents’ signs.

“If you sit here long enough, a man is getting ready to come across the street from City Hall bringing me $500, today,” Betts says. “I’m getting that kind of support. I don’t need to tear down signs.”

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St. Louis to Develop First Citywide Transportation Plan in Decades

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1 year ago

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May 21, 2024

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The City of St. Louis is working to develop its first citywide mobility plan in decades, Mayor Tishaura Jones’ office announced Tuesday. This plan seeks to make it easier for everyone — drivers, pedestrians, bikers and public transit users — to safely commute within the city.

The plan will bring together other city projects like the Brickline Greenway, Future64, the MetroLink Green Line, and more, “while establishing new priorities for a safer, more efficient and better-maintained transportation network across the City,” according to the release. 

The key elements in the plan will be public engagement, the development of a safety action plan, future infrastructure priorities and transportation network mapping, according to Jones’ office.

The overarching goals are to create a vision for citywide mobility, plan a mixture of short and long-term mobility projects and to develop improved communication tools with the public to receive transportation updates. In recent years, both people who use public transit and cyclists have been outspoken about the difficulties — and dangers — of navigating St. Louis streets, citing both cuts to public transit and traffic violence.

To garner public input and participation for the plan, Jones’ office said there will be community meetings, focus groups and a survey for residents to share their concerns. The city will also be establishing a Community Advisory Committee. Those interested in learning more should check out at tmp-stl.com/

“Everyone deserves to feel safe when getting around St. Louis, whether they’re driving, biking, walking or taking public transit,” Jones said in a news release. “Creating a comprehensive transportation and mobility plan allows us to make intentional and strategic investments so that moving around St. Louis for jobs, education, and entertainment becomes easier, safer and more enjoyable.”

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