Gale Brophy, a cast member on Netflix’s newest reality show, Members Only: Palm Beach, said she called former President Bill Clinton to help with her son’s kidnapping.
Members Only: Palm Beach focuses on the lives of a group of women living in Palm Beach, Florida, and the dynamics that come with running in an exclusive part of the country. Throughout the season, Brophy drops the names of several presidents, shoring up her status as a member of an elite social class.
While on a boat to celebrate Hilary Musser’s wedding, Brophy tells the women she has a tattoo dedicated to her son, who she says was almost kidnapped once. She said that while she was at her horse farm in Wellington, Florida, she got a call from someone demanding a $100,000 ransom.
“I had just helped Bill Clinton get in office, cause I called Bill directly because I couldn’t get through to 911,” Brophy said.
The women then joke about what Clinton wanted in exchange for the favor, alluding to the scandal with his former intern, Monica Lewinsky.
The women move on to another topic, so viewers don’t know how the story ended or any more details about her son’s “almost” kidnapping. But, Brophy shared the rest of the story with Newsweek.
Brophy said she got the call when her son was eight years old. She was given just minutes to get to the Palm Beach Day School, where her son was enrolled. When she got there she said the FBI and Secret Service was at the school.
“I’m sending my son to the best school, and this happens,” Brophy said.
She said the ransom call was actually a hoax that was done in an attempt to get her to pay $100,000, which she didn’t end up paying because her son was safe and the police caught the perpetrators.
Newsweek reached out to Clinton via email for comment.
The Palm Beach socialite did attend a White House event for Clinton.
In 1996, Brophy was dating Walter Shorenstein, a real estate magnate from San Francisco, who was chairing a dinner for the White House Endowment Fund. While walking into the White House, one of Brophy’s shoes fell off, according to Pat Steger, who was the San Francisco Chronicle society editor at the time. During the event, Brophy spoke with then-first lady Hillary Clinton.
Brophy also attended a state dinner with Shorenstein for former French President Jacques Chirac and his wife, Bernadette, in 1996. At the time, The Washington Post described the dinner as the “most glittery official dinner of the Clinton administration.”
Official records reviewed by Newsweek show Brophy didn’t make any donations to Clinton’s campaign at the time, but Shorenstein did. He has given between $1 million and $5 million to the William J. Clinton Foundation since it was founded in 1997.
Brophy’s also talked about her connections to the Trump family on the show. She called herself one of Ivana Trump’s “best friends” and said she bid against President Donald Trump to buy his Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago.
Update 12/30/25 5:24 p.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from Brophy.
