GRANDVIEW, Mo. -- Fans of "Dancing with the Stars" who tried to call in and vote for Mario Lopez on Tuesday night may have talked with a Missouri woman instead.
Hundreds of people called Carmen Allen's cell phone by accident.
Allen, who has never watched the show, said she was surprised when she started getting hang-up calls on her cell phone Tuesday night.
"Finally, I just said, 'Well, maybe I just need to quit saying 'Hello' and just pick up the phone and say, 'Who are trying to get a hold of?'" Allen said.
Callers were trying to vote for actor Mario Lopez. Viewers were asked to call a 1-800 number, which was the same as Allen's cell phone number, the only difference being the area codes.
But the calls did not stop. Allen said she received 200 calls in one hour Tuesday night. She turned off her cell phone, but the calls continued. She said she had 80 messages in her voice mail when she checked Wednesday morning.
When out-of-state callers were getting through, Allen said she thought it was more than just a wrong number.
"When I started getting really irritated, I just started picking up the phone and saying, 'You need to dial 1-800.' And they were saying, 'We are.' And it was just, it was like a person would call back three or four times," Allen said.
The calls were eating Allen's cell phone minutes, which her service provider will give back.
Allen said she didn't know who Mario Lopez was until friends told her.
And The Winner Is... The winner of the competition? NFL star Emmit Smith.
"It is awesome! It is awesome!" Smith exclaimed when he won. Now, the NFL's all-time leading rusher has three Super Bowl rings and a mirrored ball dancing trophy.
Smith had some kind words for his fellow finalist. He called Mario Lopez a "true gentleman." Smith said Lopez's dancing helped to raise the bar for all the competitors.
The former Dallas Cowboy great credited his professional partner Cheryl Burke with transforming him into a dancer. Smith said they've come a long way.
Smith will make sure every visitor to his house will see his "Dancing with the Stars" trophy. He said he'll put that disco-ball-on-a-stand in his family room above the fireplace.
Smith said winning "Dancing" is "as big as the Super Bowl." He didn't say anything about the emotion of it.
Instead, Smith talked about the numbers. He said, "Whenever you have 26 million people watching a show and watching you perform and then going to the phone after that and voting for you and pushing you through it, it says a lot about a television show."
Meanwhile, Lopez said he's "hanging in there" after coming in second. But, when he hears some people say he's the better dancer, he told Associated Press Radio News "therein lies the irony" because he "thought this was a dance competition" and that "the better dancer should win, if that's the objective."
He said he's not being boastful, but he had the better partner and the more difficult routines.
His dance partner, Karina Smirnoff, is making lemonade out of the lemons of coming in second. She said, "It's better to be second while everyone is saying 'You should have been first,' than be first when everyone says 'You should be second."
But Jerry Springer had different ideas. Springer said he had his fingers crossed that write-in votes would make him the winner of "Dancing with the Stars." It didn't happen.
But, Springer analyzed the real results, saying "Mario, obviously, was the most talented dancer in the show. Emmitt probably had the most compelling story because he came from being a regular guy -- obvious a super athlete -- but, a regular guy, and he learned how to dance on the show and rose to the top." Springer said, "That's the great American story" and he said he thinks "that's what won it."
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