Miss USA 1992, Shannon La Rhea Marketic, said Saturday she expects her reign to last longer than the teen state title she won and lost in 1989.
The 21-year-old Miss California USA said she dropped out of pageant competition for a while after her Miss Arizona Teen USA experience as a Phoenix high school senior."I was selected as the winner on stage that evening at the pageant and about a week and a half later it was discovered that I was actually the first runner-up and not the winner," Marketic told The Associated Press.
"It was very tough at the time because I was 17 and it was a very tragic and emotional time for me anyway. At that point I figured I was through with pageants. I got a lot of negative publicity out of the whole thing," she said. "It caused me to be a stronger person."
Her pageant biography related another trying time and its end when she was 11. She wrote that her most cherished childhood memory was when her father woke her up one night and poured all of his liquor down the drain.
"He promised me that the nightmare of alcoholism was over. He's been sober and my best friend ever since," the biography said.
Marketic, a junior at Pepperdine University, won $230,000 in cash and prizes when she was crowned at the Friday night pageant. She will compete in the Miss Universe contest May 15 in Bangkok, Thailand.
The first runner-up was Candace Brown, 23, of Auburn, Ala.; and second runner-up was Audra Y. Wallace, 22, of Charleston, S.C.
During a news conference, Marketic, from Malibu, Calif., said she hopes to keep her sense of humor during her reign. She demonstrated her wit after the telecast Friday.
"I feel incredibly blessed and I think I'm having a good hair day," she said. Marketic, a telecommunications major, said she plans to be a defense attorney.