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LADY OF THE LEGS
PAGE 5 OF 7

"Everyone's like yelling from behind, going, Congratulations, Debbie!--and it just went in one ear and out the other."

Q: Did you go down to Kaoshiung?
A: All the way south and all the way up north. And being on the road for four weks before a pageant is kind of long, so a lot of girls got catty. I was happy to be there because I kind of didn't care if I won. I just wanted to be in a new place out of the country. It was really exciting for me, I had a lot of fun. I learned a little Chinese but I lost it.

Q: Before that had you spoken any Mandarin or Cantonese?
A: No. When I won--the people, they weren't offende but they were like, How come you don't speak Chinese? [putting on a hick drawl] Waal, that's b'cuz I'm lak fourth generation.

Q: What distinguished you from the other girls?
A: I was caring, and I was just more down to earth.

Q: Were the judges observing you?
A: Every day.

Q: You were like living with the judges.
A: Yeah.

Q: Were you the tallest?
A: No, there were girls that were taller. Seven or eight [of 42] were taller. But a lot of them were professional models. As long as they were a quarter Asian, they could enter, so a lot of them were mixed.

Q: So they looked practically caucasian.
A: I honestly didn't think I was going to win until that night. So when they read my name for the top 10 or 12, I was totally excited. Okay, we got it--I'm happy enough that I got that far.

Q: Is that really what you felt?
A: Honest!

Q: You weren't thinking, God I'll die if I don't win? A: Actually, this is even funnier. They had some soap opera star or some singer as the MC. When it came down to the end, he called out the top five. I was really excited. He had the printout and I think he thought that in Chinese you read it from bottom up so he was actually reading it in reverse. So when he was announcing the fourth runner-up he called my name. So I got my flowers and my ribbon.

Everyone's clapping and I'm standing--it was like totally high emotion--I didn't know what was going on. Then, they got all the way down to the last two girls and it went silent. The judges were like...! They called the MC back down there and this was all going on in Chinese so we didn't know what was going on. He comes back and he apologized in Chinese and English and said there'd been a mixup in the computer printout, you know. And so we all had to like get back in line. I was thinking, 'Oh my god, I'm not even supposed to be in the top five!'

Q: Was your mother there?
A: Yeah. She didn't know what was going on. She was surprised I even made it to the top 10. We were standing in that line and he was calling it backwards. I was oblivious, I didn't even know what was going on. Like, Duh, he's doing it in reverse. Everyone's like yelling from behind, going, Congratulations, Debbie!--and it just went in one ear and out the other. And I was standing there with the runner-up girl, the two of us left, and I'm still thinking, Oh my god, I hope I have a chance! Like everyone knew it was going in reverse!

Q: Everyone but you.
A: Yeah. I was going like, Huh?

Q: How did you feel when they said you won?
A: I started crying.

Q: What did you get in cash after they took away the car?
A: Thirty thousand U.S. dollars.

Q: Not bad.
A: The total was supposed to be worth like over a hundred thousand. They gave me a fur coat, diamond ring, diamond necklace, pearls, a real tiara with jade and diamonds and emeralds in it, cosmetics, luggage. But I got it in payments and I didn't get the last payment for some reason.

Q: How much do they owe you?
A: About $8,000.

Q: What did you do after the pageant?
A: I decided to move to the mainland just to go to school at American Applied Arts.

Q: Where's that?
A: My roommate's laughing.

Q: Huh?
A: [Shouts a question to her roommate. Her roommate shouts back an answer.] Oh, the American College of Applied Arts!

Q: I can see you were a top student there.
A: [Laughs] It was a private college.

Q: What were you doing there?
A: Business administration.

Q: How did you do there?
A: Really well. I got on the Dean's List. I graduated.

Q: After winning Miss Asian World did you try your hand at modeling?
A: I was already modeling in Hawaii when I was entering those pageants. PAGE 6

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