Spotted: Betty Suarez

My dad loves celebrity sightings. He's constantly on the lookout for familiar faces: actors, musicians, athletes, politicians, random rich people, etc. When we're out together in a city that has a high star-to-civilian ratio—like New York, where I live, or Malibu, where my not-so-little little brother lives—he inevitably spots someone he thinks he recognizes. And three out of five times I get off the plane in Los Angeles, he'll greet me with a hug, a hello, and a "Did you know *insert less-than-moderately well-known celebrity name here* was on your flight?" Usually it's an anchor from a local news show. Once, it was Charo. (Cuchi, cuchi!)

I've inherited a lot of my dad's quirks and habits—our shared stubbornness, in particular, drives the rest of my family crazy—but I've yet to develop his uncanny radar for famous people. One would think, based on my affinity for Us Weekly and my excessive TV viewing, that I'd be able to sense a star and his entourage from miles away. For the most part, though, I'm totally oblivious. I once walked alongside Freddie Prinze Jr. for 18 blocks before registering who he was. And that was back in the day when he was still a semi-regular fixture in all the cheesy rom-coms I hated to love or loved to hate or maybe just kind of hated, period. When I do recognize someone, I tend to think I know them from school or work or through mutual friends. I was convinced, for example, that I went to school with this guy I saw hanging out in Cobble Hill—to the point where I almost went up and asked him if he had taken metaphysics at Columbia with Professor Collins. It was only a week later, during an episode of 30 Rock, that I realized the guy in question was Jonathan, Jack Donaghy's hilariously overenthusiastic assistant.

My dad must be rubbing off on me slowly though, because a couple of weeks ago, I had a breakthrough. America Ferrera, a.k.a. Ugly Betty's Betty, was on my flight from New York to L.A.—and I knew who she was almost immediately. It probably helped that I had seen her on TV less than 24 hours earlier, but considering she looks nothing like her character in real life, I'm going to file this confidently under progress.

Every journalist who has ever profiled Ferrera has invariably remarked on her stunning, very un-Betty-like beauty. And she is, in fact, totally gorgeous. I wasn't surprised by that. I was surprised, however, by how genuinely excited I was to see her. I even texted my dad and brother (my dad for obvious reasons, my brother because he always alerts me of his frequent celebrity run-ins) to tell them we were sharing a plane.

Ugly Betty isn't officially one of My Top 10 Favorite (Scripted) Shows Still in Production, but it probably deserves to be. I enjoy it as much as I enjoy any of the other series on that list, and I actively look forward to each new episode. Plus, I see a little of myself in Betty. It feels like we've kind of led parallel lives these last few years, so I think of her as something of a kindred spirit. When I started my job—as an assistant at a national magazine, just like her—I was naïve, idealistic, inexperienced but eager to please, slightly awkward, and disproportionately excited about everything. I was basically Betty circa Season 1, minus the hideous poncho and braces (though I did wear a lovely metal grill for six years in high school and college). Now, after some time (and more than a few near missteps), we've both grown up and into new positions. Of course, my journey hasn't been quite as...colorful as hers—nobody at my office is a Wilhelmina-type, for one, and (spoiler alert) I've never helped a colleague kidnap the baby she bore as part of the editor-in-chief's evil plan to take over the company—but I'd like to think Betty and I would be allies at Mode. If, you know, she were real and not just a figment of someone else's imagination.

Yeah, I need to get out more.