Los Angeles ? For months, Shira Barlow’s cell phone was flooded with wrong-number calls and text messages, mostly between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. on weekends. Told they had reached a college student, callers refused to believe it.

“Baby girl, how are you?” one man purred in a foreign accent. “Why are you doing this?” a woman asked. “This is so rude.” And there were several seemingly random references to “Paris.”

As in Paris Hilton.

Barlow’s story began on Valentine’s Day during a night out with friends. She was carrying her phone in a back pocket when it fell into a toilet. When she replaced it, her wireless company insisted on assigning the San Francisco native a new number with a 310 area code rather than 415.

Barlow had been given a recycled phone number that used to be Hilton’s.

Just after Barlow got her new phone close to Hilton’s Feb. 17 birthday, a flurry of calls and texts arrived. “Oh my God,” one caller said. “Where’s the party?”

Then came the day Hilton was sentenced to jail after violating probation in an alcohol-related reckless driving case. Messages about parties were replaced by dozens expressing condolences.