NEWMAN, Calif – A California high school student is in the running for most epic senior photos of all time thanks to a star from the Netflix show "Stranger Things."
Damaris Fregoso told KTXL it all began with a late night tweet she never thought would be answered.
"I was about to hop in the shower and then I was like, 'Let me look through my phone,' and then I said, 'Let me tweet him,'" she said.
That 1 a.m. tweet made a simple request to "Stranger Things" star David Harbour: "how many retweets for you take my senior photos with me."
The response from Harbour, who plays Jim Hopper on the show, calling for 25,000 retweets, came quickly.
"And then I realized it was my own tweet and once I saw that I started shaking really bad," Fregoso said. "I could not control my shaking. And I thought, 'Is this real? Like, what the heck?'"
The goal was reached in less than a day, leading to Fregoso and Harbour meeting last week in Los Angeles.
"It felt so unreal. I couldn’t believe that my favorite character was standing right in front of me," Fregoso said. "It was crazy. I like to say the word 'weird,' but it’s not weird because weird sounds not good, but it’s weird, but crazy, like a good weird."
Or maybe "strange" would have been better?
While she still can’t find the words, Fregoso now has the most talked about senior photographs of the year. In them, Harbour holds a trombone and reps an Orestimba High School sweatshirt, as promised, which he kept.
Fregoso says the outpouring of support for her photographs online has been amazing, though she is still getting used to being in the limelight.
"It just seems so unreal. I don't believe it," she said. "I'm still normal me, you know? And a whole bunch of people were talking about me and I was just like, 'Whoa.'"
Fregoso hopes the photographs with Harbour can lead to more opportunities, but for now, the Orestimba High School basketball player is glad she sent that tweet.
"Take your shot, you know, because you never know," the 17-year-old said. "It’s just crazy to think that if you catch somebody at the right moment, things change. Shoot your shot and hopefully you make the shot."
Fregoso made it and has the photographs to prove it.
