It seems to me that you are adament about defending your behavior by basically saying "Well I am only doing this because I admire her so much, and this is just how I am when I admire someone."

What you need to realize is that healthy admiration is not and should not be expressed to the person being admired by doing what you were doing.

There is some room to show how you feel about someone in the way you want, but for the most part people abide by a sort of unspoken set of rules that perserve respect between people.

You need to understand what you are actually SUPPOSED to do when you admire someone, not just what you feel like doing because you admire them.
When you admire someone at work, you respect them and perhaps aspire to be like them. They can be a role model of where you want to be in the future, or you just hold them to a high esteem. You respect their rights to privacy and personal space, and they respect yours.
But you show admiration subtley, and you feel it subtley. It is not supposed to be something that significantly changes how you act.

The feelings and actions you describe go far over and beyond actual admiration.

Your feelings and behaviors towards her were obsessive.

People tend to confuse obsession, because obsession doesn't begin as such. it begins as a normal thing like admiration, or friendship, or love. But if your feelings and behaviors begin to revolve around that person too much, then it is no longer just admiration or friendship - it becomes obsessive. That is why your behavior seemed stalkerish, because your admiration was turning obsessive, or you were expressing yourself with behaviors that represent obsession, not admiration.

You may want to learn how you are supposed to behave when you admire someone, because the way you behaved is the way a person acts when they are obsessed/infatuated with someone, not admiring.

Respect is the most important part of relationships and communication. Upholding respect for the people around you comes first. There is a problem if you act out from your feelings in a way that breaks that respect and violates someones personal space, privacy, and rights.

I am assuming it is harder for you to read social cues? If so you are not always going to know you are doing things while talking to someone that they really don't like. Even social pros accidently say things that make the other person uncomfortable, but because they can read those cues, they adjust what they say to that person accordingly. If you can't see those cues, you will just keep on instead of adjusting your behavior because you never realized it conflicted with that persons comfort zone. So all you can really do is have a basic set of rules for your social conduct.

You should start by putting "never sit at work all day waiting for that one coworker to get off work" on that list.

Then add "Don't go out of your way into work several times a week on your days off to see that one coworker while they are working".

To asnwer your question, there is nothing wrong with looking up to people. How you show it though, can be wrong, and in this case it was.