She has Paris Hilton's number

Shira Barlow had her new cellphone number for only two days when the flood of calls began.

Birthday wishes, inquiries about locations for "in" parties, requests to get on guest lists at the hottest Los Angeles nightclubs.

Most of the calls were placed between 2 and 4 a.m. on weekends. Some were annoying. Many involved slurred words.

When the callers were told they had reached a UCLA college student, they refused to believe it.

"Baby girl, how are you?" a man purred in a foreign accent.

"Why are you doing this?" one woman asked. "This is so rude."

Little did Barlow -- or her callers -- know that she had inherited the phone number of one of the nation's most ubiquitous and sought-after young celebrities: Paris Hilton.

At first, the junior communications major thought the random references to "Paris" were some kind of nickname.

"I didn't make the connection," Barlow said of the initial calls.

But by the time Hilton was sentenced to jail in June for violating her probation, there was no avoiding it.

It all began on St. Valentine's Day during a night out in West Hollywood out with friends, Barlow said.

She was carrying her black Motorola Razr in a back pocket when it fell into a toilet.

The next day she went to replace her submerged cell. When she got the new phone, her wireless carrier insisted that Barlow be assigned a new number with a 310 area code rather than her 415 prefix.

"I was bummed," the San Francisco native said. "It's part of your identity."

As it turned out, Barlow had inherited a recycled phone number that still was very much part of Hilton's identity.

The practice stems from efforts by regulators earlier in the decade to conserve phone numbers to minimize the splitting of area codes.

Service carriers say it is common for them to hold numbers for users an average of six months before reassigning them.

In theory, the wait allows people to inform family, friends and business associates about the change.

But Michael Shames, executive director of the Utility Consumers' Action Network, says the turnaround time for recycled numbers is closer to three months -- or as little as one.

That means many people don't get the message of a switched number.

But what if the old number belongs to a VIP or celebrity?

Lansing, Mich., high school student Katie Kamar found that out this year when she randomly inherited the phone number formerly belonging to Michigan Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm.