Jenna Kashou spent the past six months at Milwaukee’s Pfister Hotel, not with a suitcase but an iPad.

To Kashou, the folks traipsing through the lobby were not just travelers, brides, businessmen, families on vacation, school bleacher salesmen and afternoon tea aficionados. They were people with stories to tell.

As the Pfister Hotel’s narrator in residence, Kashou sought out guests and visitors, learned their story and wrote a twice-weekly blog illustrated with photos and video.

“You need a lot of guts to go up to somebody and say, ‘Hey, why are you here at the Pfister?’ So it’s a little daunting,” said Kashou, whose last name is pronounced like the nut.

Hotel lobbies are a great place to observe humanity, and the Pfister’s is no different. Kashou, whose tour of literary duty ended last week, met folks with common and uncommon stories. Like the British woman who discovered she had a half sister in America when her sibling, who is 20 years younger, found her on Facebook. The British woman’s husband gave her a trip to Milwaukee, including airfare and a week’s stay at the Pfister, as a Christmas present so the sisters could meet

Or the 94-year-old woman celebrating her birthday at the Pfister with her son, who flies in from Hong Kong each year to visit his mother on her birthday. She credits bowling and tap dancing for her longevity.

Or the couple who won a night at the historic hotel in a Kentucky Derby contest at a local restaurant; they had been dating a year and the man proposed to his fiancée at the hotel. They celebrated with chocolate-covered strawberries served on a plate that said: “Congratulations!”

“You really get treated like a celebrity. You’re part of the staff but also a fly on the wall. It’s been awesome,” Kashou said as she sipped a glass of water from the bar in the beautiful ornate lobby.

Kashou, 31, was the fifth narrator at the Pfister, which started the program 2 1/2 years ago as a spinoff of the hotel’s popular artist in residence.

She learned of the program through social media more than a year ago, applied and didn’t make the cut. But she was encouraged to apply again, submitting a lengthy application, résumé and examples of published work. As a finalist, she was invited to the hotel to write a couple of blogs based on interviews with guests and sit down for a videotaped interview.

Narrators in residence receive a $1,000 monthly stipend, free parking and a small expense account to buy drinks or meals while on the job. In return, they write at least two blogs each week for six months, spending 10 hours a week at the hotel.

Kashou could write about almost anything she wanted, though she was told to shy away from celebrities and ghosts at the Pfister and to focus on guests rather than employees. She’s not a sports nut, so she didn’t recognize professional athletes staying at the Pfister. Most of her blog postings were about guests, but she did write about Pfister employees with interesting backgrounds, including a woman in catering who is an opera singer and a man in security who volunteers to help homeless veterans.

This year, 30 people applied for the May-October narrator. Molly Snyder, a senior writer at OnMilwaukee.com, started on May 1. She’ll collaborate with artist in residence Stephanie Barenz on a book.

“When anyone talks about the Pfister, whenever they walk in the door, there’s always some sort of story, like my parents got married here or I had my first job here,” said Cassy Scrima, area director of marketing for Marcus Hotels. “We thought it would be a good way to tell our guests’ stories through this narrator blog.”

A Mequon native who earned degrees in Spanish and mass communication at the University of Iowa, Kashou is a grant writer at Radio Milwaukee. She also writes the weekly “Girl About Town” blog for MilwaukeeMag.com.

Kashou found her stories through tips from Pfister staff, from hanging out in the lobby, restaurants and lounges and by simply walking up to someone and talking to them. When she saw a group posing for a photo, Kashou volunteered to snap pictures and learned it was a reunion of five men who hadn’t seen each other since they attended Washington University in the early 1960s.

Sometimes people noticed her typing on her iPad or MacBook at the hotel bar and asked why she was still working on a Friday evening. That led to more conversations and stories for her blog.

She talked to folks at various events at the hotel, ranging from fundraisers and a weekly writer’s gathering to a networking event for Hispanic professionals and ballroom dance competition.

She struck up a conversation with a Michigan woman visiting the Pfister for a weekend and to break the ice, Kashou asked what she did for a living. The woman slid over a business card that said: “I trade stocks for a giving.” Kashou learned the unassuming woman had donated more than $50,000 to charity in a decade of stock picking.

“Everybody was flattered that someone would take an interest in their story,” said Kashou.