Attracting almost as much attention as the record-setting 241-count array of tomatoes at Sunday’s Heirloom Tomato Harvest Celebration in Los Gatos was the Guinness World Records judge.

Christina Conlon, 32, was easy to spot in a California crowd of tees, shorts and sundresses. She was the one wearing the navy blue blazer, gray slacks and button-down white shirt — what she called the “summer uniform” for the British-owned Guinness.

Related Articles Tomato festival in Los Gatos breaks Guinness world record We caught up with her after the judging and before the big reveal. After all, the Santa Clara Valley is full of tomato growers happy to give advice, but how often do you get to meet someone who has such a cool job?

The first surprise: Despite the proper British uniform, Conlon is an American who lives in Philadelphia, and one of a half-dozen “adjudicators” for the North America and South America region. She got her job the old-fashioned way: She knew someone.

A few years ago she’d become disillusioned, she said, with working 100-hour weeks as a corporate bankruptcy attorney and was looking to do something new when she met a friend for lunch in midtown Manhattan. That friend worked for Guinness’ U.S. headquarters nearby and mentioned a job opening.

Conlon fit the model for Guinness judges: “I would call us cheerful nerds. We’re good at applying rules.”

That means counting with precision, being fluent in the metric system (no small feat for an American who grew up with the imperial system of feet, inches and pounds) and performing one’s responsibilities with great decorum.

And you must live within one hour of a major airport. (You never know when you’ll be called upon to fly to the Philippines to verify the size of a New Year’s Eve fireworks display. And yes, the 870,000 “successfully detonated” fireworks set a record, Conlon said.)

Oh, and you can’t eat or drink alcohol while on the job and in Guinness uniform. And you can’t fraternize after hours with the record-setters.

Some record attempts are easier than others to verify. The Los Gatos tomato count was conducted first by personal count, with Conlon consulting a spreadsheet and tomato experts confirming that each of the 241 was properly labeled. She conducted a second count using a hand-held clicker. And the third count was a photographic one; Guinness requires her to take a picture of every tomato.

Others are time-consuming and difficult. For example, Conlon adjudicated the “world’s longest pizza” record set in June in the Southern California city of Fontana. That involved engineers and mechanics from some of the world’s biggest pizza oven makers, who had to determine the cooking rate and speed of the conveyor-belt pizza, plus two scaffolding companies to build the framework for such an endeavor. “With any measurement over 20 meters they are required to get a certified surveyor,” she said.

What happens when a record attempt fails?

After one incident in which the disappointed crowd booed and threw water bottles at her, Conlon now defers to the local organizers about how to announce the news of a failed try. If there’s any question, she will review and re-review the evidence.

Sometimes, Mother Nature gets in the way, as in the case of a San Francisco group hoping to record the most signatures in the sand. Rain washed most of them away before the count began.

Conlon defends all these world-record tries, no matter how silly some of them might seem, as clever ways to help nonprofits and build community. The “largest toy pistol fight” at the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium, for example, raised enough money to build two houses for low-income residents, she said. And that 6,333-foot-long pizza in Fontana fed the clientele of several food kitchens.

“All these events are to raise awareness or raise money,” she said. And the popularity of those efforts is what keeps the Guinness volume at No. 3 on the most-sold-book list, right after the Bible and the Koran, she said.

These days, however, most people access the records online at www.guinnessworldrecords.com, where the Los Gatos record will soon join other hundreds of other amazing food feats.