I wasn’t expecting much when I dashed over to South Coast Plaza today to snap a few pictures of Jaime Pressly and write a few lines about her for my blog. And the fact that she was nearly an hour late made the assignment I had given myself seem even more like a mistake. I was slammed with work today — it’s always tough on Wednesdays when I have to shepherd the Daily Pilot and the Huntington Beach Independent to press. Still, I left the office with more work to do to catch the “My Name is Earl” actress at a book signing at Borders.

As I pleasantly chatted to pass the time with Beverly Morgan, South Coast Plaza’s PR manager,  I started to get that gnawing feeling that time was a wastin’ and I should get back to the office. Still, something told me to hang on. Maybe it would be worth it. Finally, just as I was about to bolt, Jaime Pressly burst into the back of Borders where we waited, out of breath and red-faced with profuse and sincere apologies about how her ride there had gotten stuck in traffic (I wrote about it in the Pilot). That immediately struck me. She was genuinely sorry for making us wait. That’s ironic to me. My reflex is to figure all famous people for self-absorbed jerks with a sense of entitlement. Lord knows I’ve met enough of them over the years.

She charmed us with her humor as she got her footing. That didn’t surprise me at all. You don’t get to be the star of a TV show on looks alone. There’s got to be some charisma and talent, and she has both.

But she’s got soul, too.

She stirred all of us with the poignant story of the motivation for her memoir, “It’s Not Necessarily Not the Truth.” She was pregnant with her son, Dezi, and wanted to leave behind some sort of record of what brought her to that point in her life. It’s not a typical story. As she likes to joke, she was raised in North Carolina but she grew up in Costa Mesa.

She arrived in Costa Mesa the summer before her sophomore year at Costa Mesa High School and put in a semester there before jetting off to Japan for her modeling career. She finished her education in independent study and went on to study at Orange Coast College. She credited Rod and Shelly Blythe who took her in as a teenager in Costa Mesa for helping to shape her. She referred to them as “parents” who had as much impact on her as her birth parents.

Five years ago when Ron got cancer she moved them to Colorado so they could be closer to extended family and so that Shelly wouldn’t be on her alone when Ron passed away. He died Nov. 11. Pressly remembered the date instantly.

She wasn’t mushy or overwrought about it. Just direct and poignant. You could tell she loves them very much. She called her book a story of “inspiration and redemption.” I was in such a hurry to file my story I forgot to buy the book. I should. I love stories like that.

P.S. Here’s the cute story that inspired the book’s peculiar title. She had asked her grandfather — Earl coincidentally enough — about some family lore involving a potential familial relationship with Elvis Presley. There’s some mythology about a split between the Presleys that was difficult enough to compel some of them to drop the second “e” in the last name (and exchange it for an “s” apparently). Earl showed her pictures of the King and himself when he was young and pointed out how much they look alike and then he said, “So, you see, it’s not necessarily not the truth.” Pressly had the title of her book just before she was about to pitch it. Of course, the link to Elvis is apocryphal, but who cares? A good story is a good story — that’s what I say.

Another fan asked her when she knew she wanted to be an actress and she told a very cute story about when she was in a kid’s pageant. She was 3, and she did a little crab walk with her legs behind her head, walking on her hands and waving to the crowd. But her legs got stuck, her teacher picked her up like luggage, carted her off stage and whispered to her to “say good night.” As her mother worked to unhook the sequins that had gotten her legs stuck to her hair, little Jaime proudly declared, “I’m a star! Did you see all those people laughing and clapping?” Twenty-five years later she did the same gag for “My Name Is Earl.” Everything comes full-circle, right?

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