By the time she was crowned Miss America 1988, Kaye Lani Rae Rafko-Wilson had grown accustomed to being categorized by the general public as a "brainless sex-kitten."
She had been a nurse.But underneath the crown, there's a lot more substance to the beauty queen who, despite offers to do professional modeling and acting, stuck with nursing when her reign ended.
"I think the reason I stayed in nursing this long is because of the personal and professional rewards," she said in an interview Friday. "No other career could come close to offering the same opportunities and rewards. And obviously we enjoy what we are doing."
Unfortunately, she said, high school students aren't looking into careers that they'll enjoy.
"They are looking into what is going to give them the most money so they can buy little toys like their parents have - VCRs and cars," she said.
Rafko-Wilson, who's hit the lecture circuit during the worst nursing shortage in U.S. history, hopes to persuade young adults to look beyond the bucks.
Friday morning the oncology specialist touted the rewards of nursing - including flexibility and diversity - before more than 300 student nurses and high school students at the Red Lion Inn. Later in the morning she addressed 400 hospital officials attending the 11th annual Utah Hospital Association Convention in Little America.
Her message was also directed at lawmakers, whose alleged refusal to adequately fund nursing-education programs has contributed to the shortage.
Mary Ann Anderson, project coordinator and instructor at Weber State College School of Nursing, said the state's financial woes have forced Weber to turn away three qualified applicants for every one accepted.
Yet the administrator of a major Salt Lake hospital recently told her that he could hire 50 nurses tomorrow if they walked through the facility's doors.
The nationwide nursing shortage, Rafko-Wilson said, could cripple the health-care system.
"We are the ones 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week who have physical contact with the patients. People forget about that," she said. "They also forget that we are the ones who change dependency to independency; death to life. We change fears to understanding and calmness, and we are the ones who grieve at the bedside when the patient dies at 3 in the morning.
"We don't call the physician in to be with the family."
Rafko-Wilson, whose long-range goal is to open and manage a hospice program, said nurses are the heart of the health-care team.
"We are the only ones who deal holistically. There is no way the high standard of health care throughout this country could continue without us."
Yet, ironically, she added, while Americans expect the most from education and health care, "teachers and nurses are the most undervalued and underpaid."