A Hollywood climber, grounded in Medford

The girl may have left Medford, but Medford definitely hasn't left the girl.

Movie star and television entertainment reporter Maria Menounos stepped off the airplane at Logan Airport last week to find her best friend, with a steak and cheese sub from Bob's on Main Street.

"They're the best," Menounos said the following day, while reflecting on her dazzling career, which has taken her from serving coffee at Dunkin' Donuts to interviewing movie stars in what seems to her Medford fans to have been the blink of an eye.

Menounos, 28, works as a broadcaster, movie actress, and producer, and model.

Through it all, she's stayed close to her Medford roots.

So last week, to promote her new movie, "Kickin' It Old Skool," she visited her old high school.

"It's so nice to come back," she said, in a teacher's conference room at Medford High School.

"There's a lot that is still the same, but you can see the upgrades and face lifts, too," she said.

But perhaps one of the biggest changes was the way she was greeted: The band played as her former teachers and friends welcomed her home. Nearby, teary-eyed girls and slack-jawed boys took it all in.

"I'm her number one fan," said a shaking Lindsey DeMont, a teenager who has watched Menounos's steady climb to success. DeMont, like Menounos, has her roots in Greece. "I feel a real connection with her."

DeMont's friend Lauren Toomey was equally starstruck.

Staring at Menounos's black patent leather Stuart Weitzman pumps, Alice and Olivia top, and many, many gold Chanel accessories, Toomey said, "I love her style."

Menounos credits her parents for her work ethic and compassion, recalling a time when the family spent their days cleaning up nightclubs in Boston. She remembered befriending a homeless man named Al at the now-defunct rock club The Channel. He'd haul out the trash in exchange for free beer. The club closed when she was about 13, and she lost touch with Al.

"Then, two years after the club closed, my father told me he saw him, in a coat and tie, in Boston," she recalled. "I'd love to find him and see how he is doing."

In high school, Menounos juggled the job at Dunkin' Donuts with beauty pageants. While in high school she won Miss Massachusetts Teen USA.

Sometimes the tips from the coffee shop weren't enough to pay the bills. At one point, she sold her beloved 1982 blue-gray Camaro to pay for a pageant dress.

"I loved that car," she said last week. "I'd love to find the guy I sold it to and buy it back."

After high school, she attended Emerson College and often strolled past the exclusive boutiques, looking longingly at the pricey fashions.

"I've always loved Chanel," she said. She paid for her education in part by selling Chanel makeup at Lord & Taylor in the Burlington Mall.

While a senior at Emerson, Menounos was hired as a reporter for Channel One News, which is broadcast in schools nationwide.

"Entertainment Tonight" hired Menounos as a correspondent in 2002 to report on movies, music, and fashion. Since 2005, she has been working as a correspondent for "Access Hollywood" and "Today."

At the same time she developed her acting career, appearing in the television shows "Scrubs," "One Tree Hill," and "Without a Trace" as well as the movie "The Fantastic Four."

She is a spokeswoman for Pantene hair products and has appeared in a Jessica Simpson music video.

And through it all, she appears to have stayed the same old Maria.

"Ciao, Bella!" said Domenic Camarra, her former Italian teacher, welcoming her back.

"She's still the same Maria," he said later. "Exuberant. Always with the big smile."

Medford Mayor Michael McGlynn stopped by to say hello.

"She's a great role model for our kids," he said. "So many young people in Hollywood have not been handling their success, but Maria is different."

Indeed, her teachers seemed most pleased when she told them that her father still chastises her for her acting roles that require her to kiss people in front of the camera.

"He'll call and say, 'Maria, Maria, Maria,' " she said.

Later, after the crowds had dispersed, Menounos said she was amazed at the reception she got.

"You never see yourself as others see you," she said. "I was nervous coming back here."

Her fans were equally nervous as they gingerly approached her, hoping for an autograph, a photograph, or a few minutes in her limelight.

"She said, 'Oh, another Greek,' " a giddy Kiki Mavrokostidis, 14, told her friends.

Nearby, Alex Costa, a 16-year-old junior, was equally starstruck.

He said, "She's like the biggest celebrity ever to come out of our high school."

Christine McConville's e-mail is cmcconville@globe.com.