Paris Hilton to be released soon

While Paris Hilton counted down her final hours in jail, Los Angeles was preparing for the media onslaught to herald her return to freedom.

Photo: Paris Hilton to be released soon

Paris Hilton to be released soon

The Federal Aviation Administration promised to keep a close watch on the paparazzi helicopters likely to track her every move after her expected release Tuesday.

"We will be sending inspectors to her neighborhood and to the jail to keep an eye on all the helicopter and perhaps even airplane traffic in the vicinity and make sure all the operations are conducted safely," said FAA spokesman Ian Gregor.

Meanwhile, in the fashionable Hollywood Hills neighborhood Hilton usually calls home, city transportation officials put up temporary no-parking signs to ensure that news vans and other vehicles do not block access to the narrow, winding street.

"It's done to enable the people who live in the community to have access to their homes," said Transportation Department spokesman Bruce Gillman. He did not know how long the signs would remain but said, "Hopefully, the media isn't there too long."

At the Sheriff's Department, which administers the Los Angeles County jail system, officials were keeping quiet about how Hilton was spending her last hours in jail.

"What I will say is to reiterate that the release date is tomorrow," sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said Monday. "We're not going to discuss anything other than that tomorrow is the day."

Hilton spokesman Elliot Mintz declined to comment on what the star of television's "The Simple Life" planned to do after being sprung from stir. That left Paris watchers everywhere to speculate about everything from where the hotel heiress would be to what her first meal would be.

"I will definitely get a good meal because the food in here is absolutely inedible and horrible," the 26-year-old celebutante told E! News' Ryan Seacrest by phone last week.

Over the weekend, her mother, Kathy Hilton, paid a visit to the jail and told reporters afterward that her daughter was itching to trade in her orange jail jumpsuit for something a bit more stylish.

"She doesn't like orange anymore," Hilton's mother said. "She can't wait to get that orange suit off."

The hotel heiress presumably will discuss more long-range plans Wednesday when she appears on CNN's "Larry King Live."

Hilton, who is arguably most famous for a homemade sex video and her party-hopping ways, has said she would like to begin doing something more important with her life.

"I want to help build a transitional home so that when inmates leave here they don't have to go back to the street," she told Seacrest from jail. "These women just keep coming back because they have no place to go."

Hilton's path to jail began Sept. 7, when she failed a sobriety test after police saw her weaving down a street in her Mercedes-Benz. Hilton, who said she was hungry and on the way to get a hamburger, pleaded no contest to alcohol-related reckless driving and was sentenced to probation for three years.

In the months that followed she was stopped twice by officers who discovered her driving on a suspended license. The second stop landed her in court and then in jail.