Focus | And the winners are …

  
Story by Chris Graham
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Samantha Casey wanted to put what she’s been learning as a business and marketing major at William & Mary to use for the good of the nonprofit that she came across a couple of years ago that creates safe havens for children rescued from the sex-trafficking trade.

The new Miss Virginia USA has quite the platform for raising awareness of the organization, Love 146, and its efforts on the worldwide stage.

“Love 146 goes overseas and creates safe homes in old hotels and old schoolhouses, and they train aftercare workers to work with the children. The focus is on the healing part of the process. That’s what drew me to wanting me to be involved with it,” said Casey, of Jeffersonton, a small Central Virginia locale roughly equidistant from Culpeper and Warrenton on the east side of the Blue Ridge.

The child-sex trade is, sadly, quite lucrative – second only to drug trafficking in the criminal industry. Casey’s interest in Love 146, named for the number worn by a girl in a brothel visited undercover by the charity’s founders, grew after she watched a video produced by Love 146 describing its mission.

Her beauty-pageant history dates back to her turn in 2006 as Miss Virginia Teen USA, which Casey credits as being the jumpstart to her “biggest transformation as a person.”

“You are put into situations that a normal teenager is not put in. For example, the Miss Teen USA pageant is on national television, and I was fortunate to be in the top 5, which meant that I had to answer a question in front of 9 million people. The pressure that you’re put under, the responsibilities that you’re given, it’s something that I believe is exceptional,” said Casey, who won the Miss Virginia USA pageant held in Virginia Beach on Nov. 21.

Also getting acclimated to that new reality is Jacqueline Carroll of Stanardsville, the new Miss Virginia Teen USA. Carroll, a sophomore at United Christian Academy in Greene County, has been fielding a number of requests for personal appearances since her pageant victory, which at first she said was hard for her to process.

“People are asking me to be in their parades, and I’m like, You want me in your parade? Really? And then it hit me. Oh, yeah, I’m Miss Virginia Teen USA. You don’t think of yourself that way,” said Carroll, who didn’t begin the pageant thinking that she was going to be able to come home the winner, but admits her competitive juices got to flowing as the event went on.

“By the top I made the top five, I really thought I was going to end up being third or fourth. And that’s the goal that I had set in my mind. It was like, You don’t have a prayer of winning, so we’re going to go for third or fourth,” she said. “And then it got down to me and the other girl, and I was like, I feel so lucky right now that I can even be second place. And then they called the other girl’s name, and I was like, Ohmygosh!”

The Miss Teen USA pageant is coming up in the summer. The Miss USA pageant is set for April 18 in Las Vegas. Casey is taking a sabbatical from her studies to get ready for Miss USA.

Her thought as her name was called at Miss Virginia USA: “Yes, I get to eat. I can eat pizza and french fries and all that stuff.”