What's It Like Having Elon's Old Number? She Can Tell You

Anyone trying to give Elon Musk a call shouldn't be surprised if they end up speaking to a 25-year-old Sephora worker instead. Her name is Lyndsay Tucker, and she was by chance given a phone number by AT&T a few years ago that used to belong to none other than the Tesla and SpaceX CEO. Since then, the California woman tells NPR she's been receiving a handful of calls and texts daily intended for Musk, whom she hadn't heard of until this phone pandemonium started. "I asked my mom, 'Hey, I keep getting these text messages ... for this guy Elon Musk. I don't know who this is,'" Tucker says. "My mom's jaw just dropped." The calls and texts, some of which are shown by NPR, have included a woman volunteering to be launched into space; a South African businessman asking to buy 1,000 trucks; and even a message from ex-Disney exec John Lasseter.

"The self driving is a trip!" Lasseter wrote about the Tesla he'd just bought, thinking he'd reached Musk. Even Bobby Allyn, the writer of the NPR story, got Tucker when he recently tried to reach out to Musk for a different article. Tucker doesn't plan to ditch the number, even though she notes "it does get irritating sometimes when it's like call after call after call." NPR reached Musk and told him about the mix-up with Tucker, to which his emailed response was: "Wow. That number is so old! I'm surprised it's still out there somewhere." NPR also asked him if he was, by any chance, giving out his old number on purpose to people he didn't want calling him, as Tucker says some of the folks who call her say that's the number Musk gave them. Musk didn't respond to that query. (Read more of the messages Tucker has been receiving here.)