“The Most Famous Fan in the World”

Sarah is very much a part of their circle, trading texts and tips with them. The paparazzi have accepted her for strategic reasons. In the era of YouTube and reality TV, there are simply more people than ever before who qualify as famous, and their every move is seemingly reported in a never-ending proliferation of gossip sites and blogs. Perhaps only a teenager could possess the energy and technical aptitude to serve as the global tracking device for it all. Sarah is incredibly adept at recognizing even the most minor celebrities and has a much better sense than her older colleagues about which seem ready to break huge. Scooter Braun, the 31-year-old talent manager of Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen, Psy and the Wanted, considers it part of his job to follow Sarah’s whereabouts on social-networking sites. It also helps that she’s nice to his clients. “The thing is, she’s not overbearing,” he told me. “She respects people’s space. She’ll say, ‘Do you mind if I get a picture?’ And if you’re like, ‘Not right now, Sarah,’ she’s like, ‘No problem.’ And she’s just a very sweet, sweet person.”

Molly Knight profiled “Stalker Sarah,” the 17-year-old girl from L.A. who’s made it her mission to take selfies with every celebrity on the planet, in the New York Times Magazine this past weekend. (The Cut also tracked her down back in April.) Sarah seems as tuned in to celebrity whereabouts as any seasoned paparazzo — a scene at Bradley International suggests she knows the airport layout better than its employees, and her new blog has entries with sentences like, “Recently, I was having dinner with Demi Lovato’s mom” — but she doesn’t sell her photos, which Knight interprets as a way to maintain her respect and status. After all, she is famous now.