Smiling and waving for a scrum of cameras, Paris Hilton returned to the celebrity limelight on Tuesday after completing a three-week jail term for drunk-driving violations.
Wearing a ponytail and short-sleeved blouse, the blonde hotel heiress and reality television star flashed a grin to the pack of photographers waiting outside the jail and ran to hug her mother Kathy Hilton, who was waiting in a black car with her father Rick.
The last time she had been seen on June 8, Hilton was weeping and wailing as she was dragged back to jail after a judge overruled a sheriff's decision to free her for unspecified medical reasons after just three days.
But her departure resembled a red-carpet affair, with a blizzard of camera flashes greeting her as she stepped out of the spartan Century Regional Detention Facility in the Los Angeles district of Lynwood.
Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said Hilton had thanked guards, nurses and other staff before leaving, describing her as demure and friendly and happy to be free again.
"She has fulfilled her obligation. It's now completed," Whitmore said. Television helicopters pursued the cavalcade accompanying her as the car took to the highway shortly after the midnight release. After stopping at a red light, chasing photographers behind the car leapt out to grab shots before Hilton's car pulled away and returned to her parents home in the exclusive enclave of Bel Air.
Hilton's parents were reported to have planned a lavish coming-out party in Las Vegas, Fox News said. But reports Monday quoted family and friends as saying that a "quiet gathering" was planned. The 26-year-old heiress to the Hilton hotel empire was jailed for violating probation over a conviction for alcohol-related reckless driving, drawing frenzied media attention.
The blonde icon was sentenced to jail in May. She had been handed 36 months' probation after driving her Mercedes with an alcohol level equal to the legal limit, but was then twice caught driving on her suspended license.
On the first occasion, Hilton signed a statement acknowledging that she was not supposed to drive, and was let off with a warning. But the next month police pulled her over in her 190,000-dollar Bentley Continental GTC when they spotted her driving at night with the headlights off.
Hilton's release from jail after a few days behind bars this month saw accusations of "celebrity justice" levelled at Los Angeles sheriff's before Hilton was returned to jail. However an exhaustive study of similar cases conducted by The Los Angeles Times indicated that Hilton was being treated unusually severely, receiving a much longer jail sentence than normal.
During her time behind bars Hilton said in a telephone interview with a television journalist that the sentence was a message from God to change her party-loving lifestyle and become a positive role model for women.
"I have been thinking that I want to do different things when I am out of here," she said. "I have become much more spiritual. God has given me this new chance."