The woman who has Elon Musk's old phone number gets calls and texts for him every day

Transcript

Lyndsay Tucker has been fielding phone calls and text messages for Tesla CEO Elon Musk since she was a teenager.

The 25-year-old Sephora skin care consultant from San Jose, Calif., was randomly assigned the eccentric business mogul's old AT&T number in 2007. 

Since then, she has received business proposals, tax questions, personal messages, and even a blueprint for a prototype bionic arm. 

"A couple of them have been about plots of land in Texas or L.A., to see if he wants to build a new Tesla plant there. I've had a couple of people ask about donations to businesses in the forms of cars or trucks," Tucker told As It Happens host Carol Off. 

"I've even had someone pushing baking of some sort. They were looking to get their cupcakes into Tesla somehow."

At first, she says she would just get the occasional call for someone looking for "Elon." She didn't think too much about it. But as the years went on, the calls became more specific.

"The moment the last name kind of came forward, I took it to my mom and I was like, 'Who is this guy? I don't know who he is. What's going on?' And her jaw dropped," Tucker said. 

"She knew immediately who Elon Musk was because she paid more attention to the news than I did as a lowly high school student."

More scandals = more calls 

Tucker notices an uptick whenever the scandal-prone tech entrepreneur makes headlines — which is often. 

In recent years, Musk has come under fire for blocking telescopes with his SpaceX satellites, calling a diver who rescued 12 boys trapped in cave a "pedo guy," and most recently, saying coronavirus stay-at-home orders are "fascist."

In fact, Tucker's story came to light after NPR reporter Bobby Allyn called her number seeking comment about Musk's threat to sue the California county where the Tesla manufacturing plant is located over its coronavirus restrictions. 

"I think my kind of normal amount of flow of what I get based on what he does definitively increased around that time. I ended up getting about three text messages and two phone calls a day," she said.

"That's kind of the highest that it has been at."

Tucker says she was bracing for an onslaught earlier this month about the birth of X Æ A-12, Musk's baby with Canadian singer Grimes.

"I was really worried ... that I was going to get a bunch of stuff about that. But crickets. Nothing happened," she said.

She also gets messages for Musk of a personal nature, including some excited texts from former Walt Disney executive John Lasseter praising his new Tesla car. 

"They were really excited about it. It's very cute. And I felt terrible because this man was trying to reach his friend and I didn't respond," she said.

"That's one of the few times I didn't respond because I knew exactly who he was. As a theater major, I looked up to him a lot."

She was eventually able to right that wrong when she ended up attending the same college as Lasseter's son.

"I told him everything. I was like, 'I'm so sorry I didn't message your father back. Like, I'm an awful person. I feel terrible,'" she said.

"He laughed. He knew immediately what I was talking about and he's like, 'I can't wait to go tell my dad. That solves that mystery.'"

After the NPR reporter accidentally reached Tucker, he called the real Musk to confirm that her number was, indeed, once his.

"Wow," Musk said. "That number is so old! I'm surprised it's still out there somewhere."

Tucker's number continues to be linked to Musk on a number of public websites, but some of the people who reached out to her say they got it directly from Musk.

That prompted NPR's Allyn to inquire whether Musk gives it out to people he's trying to dodge. Musk did not respond.

"I'm hoping that's not the case. I like to think the best of people," Tucker said. "I'm hoping it's just a misprint somewhere, but it seems like that might be what's happening."

Written by Sheena Goodyear. Interview produced by Katie Geleff.