Miss Florida USA Faces

Over $1 million dollars were raised during the evening for teenage drug counseling

Before heading back home on Saturday, our Ms. Rafalowski spent some time with our official acting coach Marc Durso. In their first session together Mr. Durso of Act True started the process of preparing for Miss USA, which is less then five months away! The session took place on the soundstages of The Hollywood Production Center.

Sunday featured a wonderful afternoon of pageantry and fashion as The Miss Miami Tropic Scholarship Pageant took place at The Miami Merchandise Mart’s Sheraton Hotel Grand Ballroom. Not only was the audience in store for a pageant, but the sold out show also had a sit down lunch and bridal wear fashion show. Our favorite part of the afternoon was a special dance performance to welcome the Miss Florida USA Family.

We welcome our friends at Miss Miami Tropics and their director Rose Martinez into The Miss Florida USA system. Several of our Southern titleholders began pageantry with Mrs. Martinez and were amongst the cast on Sunday. What a great time we had and now present the pictures of a memorable affair.

Our week concluded at Hollywood’s Night of The Stars at The Westin Diplomat Spa and County Club. A traditional event on our social calendar benefiting The Marti Huizinga Boys & Girls Club in Hollywood the night’s festivities raised over $1.4 million dollars for the cause. The evening also became the coming out party for our Miss Florida Teen USA 2008 Jillian Wunderlich as this was her first appearance since winning the title. Radiant in blue Miss Wunderlich charmed the audience that included celebrities, local politicians and sports starts. Several of whom requested photos and autographs of our new star.

Baseball Players Juan Pierre (Los Angeles Dodgers); Dontelle Willis and Scott Olson (Florida Marlins)

Amongst her admirers included Tommy Davidson; Lou “The Incredible Hulk” Farigno; Loni Anderson; several Florida Marlins and our Hollywood Mayor. She also accepted a special award that honors her representation of Hollywood. Look for a new mentorship program with our delegates and The Boys and Girls Clubs of Broward County. That concludes one fun but tiring pageant weekend!

Miss Wunderlich and Michelle Chaban (Miss West Broward Teen USA) on the red carpet being interviewed

Saturday October 20th was a very busy - and productive - day for Team Naples. In spite of the rainy and gray morning, Samantha Misener, Miss Naples Teen USA, started at 7 a.m. at the 2nd Annual 5K Walk to benefit the Desmoid Tumor Research Foundation. Samantha was invited as the Grand Marshall for the event and greeted the attendees by stating "When I see us all united to work for others, I feel so proud of this community and inspired to work harder." She then proceeded to lead the 3-mile walk together with special guest Carlos Zapata from Azteca America TV.

After the Walk, Samantha met with Emily Provenza, Miss Collier County Teen USA, at Blu Sushi in Naples where a fundraiser luncheon was held to benefit the Susan G. Komen for the Cure SWFL affiliate, to create increased breast cancer prevention awareness. Both Samantha and Emily served as hands-on volunteers.

The day was long from over. Samantha then participated in the Charity Fashion Show benefiting college scholarships for Naples young women organized by the Naples Junior Woman's club.

Samantha is a National Merit Scholar semifinalist and keeps a part-time job in addition to her school and pageant duties. Emily is ahead in her senior studies and will graduate later this year. She also keeps a part-time job and fulfills all her community service and pageant duties.

Samantha, left, Emily, Larry Genta (Manager of Blu Sushi) and event attendees during the fundraiser

luncheon part of the Blu Sushi Goes Pink campaign to benefit breast cancer awareness.

» Kudos & Did You Knows

Kudos to Miss Sarasota Teen USA-Brianna Lupo and Miss Kissimmee Teen USA-Krystal Gillen, they were special guests of the German Business Council in Cape Coral. The girls met the college students from Germany and discussed mutual interests and differences among teens from the two countries. Then the two Queens handed out the diplomas to these aspiring business students. Danke Schon Brianna and Krystal!

We have found a great host for all of our pictures before they are formally posted here on our home page. Visit http://virb.com/missfloridausa as we have posted over 150 photos from this past pre-tape weekend. We will also post all timely pictures there after preliminary pageants and special appearances. Always trying to stay ahead of the communications cure here at Miss Florida USA!

» PICTURES & STORIES WANTED!

If you enjoy reading the stories of our Miss Florida USA Family and want us to know what great things are happening either during or after you reign please email us at telair@aol.com. We love touting our sorority of outstanding Florida women. Please send us a paragraph (or two) on your appearances, awards or community service and include pictures. We want you to have all of the support of this great lifestyle we call Miss Florida USA!

» Alumni News Wanted!

If you know of any Miss Florida USA alumni in the news please drop us an email to feature them in future articles. Email all info to info@missfloridausa.com! Until next week here to good pageantry!

PICTURE OF THE WEEK!

We here at the Picture of The Week Committee take pride in being the first “all green” pageant website on the Internet. Even though the concept of 80-degree winters with global warming does not sound unappealing! Working on an environment theme after we recently viewed Al Gore’s documentary we thought a natural would be to highlight our friends at the Miss Earth Pageant. With a global placard in hand we congratulate Miss India Pooja Chitgopeker on being environmentally correct and the winner of our Picture of The Week.