While other frosh were girding for final exams, Marin Phenice Heiskell slipped away last winter for a quick trip to Anaheim. When she returned to campus, Heiskell was the 1997 USA National Teen Miss.
Heiskell had never even walked a runway until a few months earlier, when she and a friend decided to enter the Miss Teenage Texas contest. Then a Dallas high school senior, Heiskell was a self-described jock and All-American cheerleader. Lured by the $6,000 in college scholarship money for the victor, Heiskell was as surprised as anyone when she took the state crown. "In Texas, there's a history of winners having blond hair and blue eyes," says Heiskell, who is the state's first African-American victor. "So it meant a lot to me."
Heiskell, who may study public policy and plans to go to law school, notes that 40 percent of the contest was based on academic achievement. That's fine with her, she says, confessing, "I'm really not the beauty pageant type."
