Hillary Look-Alike Turns Some Heads

What with the way people had been carrying on, calling her Hillary and asking about Bill, Sharon Salas decided to get to the bottom of this thing.

I mean, she was going to the drugstore anyway, right? So along with the film she was picking up, Sharon bought a People magazine (something that she is not wont to do) because this Hillary person was the cover girl.

And, well, what with this being Southern California, what you’d expect to happen next, did.

The guy behind the film counter took a look at Sharon, then he took a look at the People cover, and he pronounced them a perfect match. Next thing you know he was handing Sharon a business card, his father-in-law’s, who is reputed to be some sort of agent-producer-Hollywood type.

“Call him!” the counter guy said.

Sharon hasn’t, as of yet.

But you never know. People have been discovered in far less glamorous locales than Payless Drugs.

“I had been wishing something exciting would happen to me,” Sharon says. “Who would have ever thought that I would look like the President’s wife?”

Indeed. Who would have thought that Sharon Salas, 40 years old, assistant preschool director and teacher, married lady and dedicated churchgoer, would end up being confused with the First Spouse of the United States?

And Sharon voted for George Bush.

“But I was sort of undecided; I could have voted for Clinton,” she says. Then she gives a Hillary-type smile, one that starts slowly and spreads, lighting up her eyes.

“I wonder how she does her makeup?” Sharon asks.

Sharon and I are sitting in the director’s office at the preschool, a bright and bouncy place in Dove Canyon, where news of Sharon’s quasi-celebrityhood is creating a buzz.

The preschool owner, Gina Lamourelle, started this thing off by mentioning Sharon’s resemblance to a friend, and friends told friends and on from there. Parents of the preschoolers have been busy pointing it out.

Also, Gina knows about this sort-of-celebrity business firsthand. One of her friends passes for actress Rhea Pearlman, and a salesman who works for her husband could be Danny DeVito, if you looked at him in the right mood.

“So I’m used to fake company,” Gina says. “I’m the only real person I know.”

Still, to have a Hillary Factor right here, well, Gina figures this could be big. “We don’t want to lose her!” she says.

“Sharon, take that headband off!” orders director Lewana Allen, Gina’s sister and next in command.

Sharon obliges, but the effect is still the same: Hillary Rodham Clinton, the woman whom all of America loves to have an opinion about.

Sharon says that the women who have pointed out her resemblance to Hillary will go on from there. They hate her or they love her, with hardly an in-between; men don’t tend to get as worked up.

Sharon, not much of a political animal herself, is rather circumspect on this count. She didn’t give a thought to Hillary one way or another until she began to feel a personal involvement of this other kind.

“Hillary has really turned out to be a pretty woman,” Sharon says. “Seeing her has almost given me a better outlook about myself, made me feel good. Even though I’ve done nothing, of course. And I would never infringe upon her lifestyle in any way, or on her family.”

But Sharon will just come right out and say it. Yes, of course, she’d love to meet Hillary one day. Sharon finds herself reading and watching more news now, seeing as how one never knows when Hillary might appear.

“To be honest with you, I had no idea that she was the woman that she is. I’m very intrigued by her. She sounds like a very intelligent, powerful woman. And I like what she did at the White House the other day, stopping the smoking. And, of course, my heart has been with children my whole life.”

Sharon’s been teaching preschoolers for 20 years. She doesn’t have any children, but she does have two cats. And, why, wait a minute . . .

I ask Sharon to thumb through that People magazine again to see if there’s a picture of Socks, the First Cat. She does and there is.

Turns out that one of Sharon’s cats, Ellie, looks just like Socks, only where Socks is black, Ellie is white, and in reverse. So there you are!

Nonetheless, despite this amazing coincidence, Sharon sums up her life as “average, hum-drum to an extent.”

Then she pauses a bit, and her eyes get Hillary-bright. She’s just thought of something and reaches for my arm to give it a squeeze.

Sharon, who was adopted at birth, says she did a search for her birth mother and actually found her in Florida two years ago. Turns out her mother, who will be 70 next month, never married nor had any more kids. She was the youngest of 12 siblings herself.

Sharon and Mom have since visited with each other twice, and they talk on the phone every three weeks. The parents who raised Sharon have died, and she was their only child.

“She is the most wonderful woman!” Sharon says of her natural mother. “I think that finding her was God’s way of giving me a mother.”

Which, as far as I’m concerned, is more exciting that being a celebrity look-alike any old time.