Julie Carlson is usually more frantic than shy, but whenever she sees a blond, blue-eyed baby at a drugstore or a public park, she knows it's best to hold her business card at arm's length. That way no one will mistake Carlson, an extras casting director, for a potential kidnapper.

The tactic works, and that's good, because finding babies to appear as "Aaron" in the ABC drama "Lost" has become Carlson's never-ending quest.

Last season, she needed 30 babies. The season before that, 27. She finds them everywhere.

"I spend a lot of time calling doctor's offices," Carlson said. "There are mom's clubs and twins clubs. There are all kinds of people I call about these babies. It's hard work. And they all have to look alike."

She needs that many because stardom is fleeting when you're an infant on camera. One week, you're cuddly Aaron, aging a day or so every Wednesday night. The next week you've literally outgrown the part.

It may take two days to film an episode, but each baby Aaron usually spends very little time on screen. That's fine with Carlson — the close-ups are a casting headache.

"It scares me when they do that," she said. "I have to match what has been on film. That is what the public is used to seeing."

Babies being babies, Carlson always arranges to have an extra infant on the set.

"It may be that one is too fussy, and I need to replace it," she said. "We have had some great luck. They coo when they are supposed to coo and cry when they are supposed to cry."

That was the case with Courtney Heimowitz's baby daughter, Jade, who appeared in five episodes during the drama's second season. The cast of "Lost" called her "The Baby that Never Cries."

"My baby never cried, ever," Heimowitz said. "She loved to be loved and she smiled at everyone. She is still like that. She is an extremely social being."

The 32-year-old mother of two heard about the show's desperate need for babies from a friend. To her surprise, Jade made a great baby boy.

During her brief acting career, Jade's face time grew as fast as a poi-eating baby.

"The first episode she was only in a little blip, maybe 10 or 20 seconds," Heimowitz said. "In her second episode, she was in a whole scene. Maybe that was a minute. Then she made the two episodes that were about the baby, and she was in almost every scene of the show."

This landed her on the cover of People magazine and in newspapers. Someone wrote something comparing Jade to Britney Spears' baby. And Jade was in the show's promotional footage that aired during halftime of the 2006 Super Bowl.

"People called me and said: 'Isn't that your daughter?' " Heimowitz said. "It was pretty weird."

With filming for the fourth season of "Lost" set to start this week, Carlson's stress level is beginning to rise again. She's found six babies for the first episode, but none for the second.

"I am frantic about that," Carlson said. "I am going to call ob-gyn offices. They know who I am by now. I say: 'Hi, I'm Julie. Have you had any blond-haired, blue-eyed babies born in the last few months?' "

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.