Celebrity Mound

She’s gone from serving cocktails to walking the red carpet at the Oscars — and she’s somehow managed to snag the world’s most eligible bachelor, George Clooney. So who is this Sarah Larson? And how did she accomplish these miraculous feats?

Well, before she was decked out in diamonds and couture, she was pouring drinks at the Palms in Las Vegas.

Sarah worked at the Palms Casino hotel, first as a cocktail waitress at Ghost, then as a VIP hostess at another N9NE Group club in the hotel, Moon, where “She would bring in clients to the club,” a source told PageSix.com. “The hosts are like salespeople and they help create an atmosphere at a party.”

“She’s really cool,” a former regular customer told PageSix.com. “She’d take shots of tequila with us, we always asked for her to be our waitress. All the girls who worked at the club, they were all hot, obviously, but everyone asked for Sarah as their server. George Clooney isn’t the first guy to notice her, you know.”

She dated Las Vegas media mogul Ryan Doherty, who owns 944 magazine, for about a year, but that was before George walked into her life.

Sarah, 29, met the Oscar winner at the premiere of Ocean’s 13 at the CineVegas film festival on June 7, 2007; there was a party for the cast at Moon. As luck would have it, Sarah served him drinks.

An insider says that George, 46, was so smitten that he tracked down the manager, Daryl, and begged him to let Sarah leave work early to hang out with him. “And everyone knows you don’t say no to George,” the Palms insider tells PageSix.com.

After they met, she continued working, but kept talking to George. “He’d give her a call and say, ‘Fly out for the weekend, come visit,’ and Sarah would go see him,” a friend tells PageSix.com.

But a few months later, as their relationship progressed, Sarah quit her $200,000-plus job to be with George — a risky move, but one that anyone who saw the couple at the Oscars would agree has paid off. “He didn’t tell her to quit her job, just at some point they had a conversation about it when things got serious,” another friend says.

“She still has her house in Vegas that she sometimes goes back to, but ever since the motorcycle accident [in September 2007], they’ve been pretty much going everywhere, from his house in Lake Como, his house in Malibu, to Dubai, the Venice Film Festival, et cetera. She’s been exposed to this new lifestyle, hanging with George and his friends, which include Brad [Pitt] and Angelina [Jolie], Matt [Damon] and Luciana [Barroso],” another friend explained.

“She’s like a really cool chick. She’s hot, cool, strong and independent,” this friend of Sarah’s added.

There’s definitely something about this Sarah, who has succeeded where so many of George’s previous women — including actress Krista Allen, British TV host Lisa Snowdon and Renée Zellweger — have failed. Nobody would’ve ever guessed that a winner of a reality TV show (Fear Factor) would be the one to win the heart of Hollywood’s most notorious bachelor.