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May 17, 1998
Dispute Leaves 2 Claiming to Be Miss Colorado
ENVER -- The fight to be Colorado's reigning beauty queen has become an ugly matter. The unfolding drama over the crown peaked last week with two young women asserting that they were Miss Colorado and the state pageant organization contemplating bankruptcy.
Regina Flores won the 1997 Miss Colorado title last June but was stripped of it late last year in a dispute with the pageant board over her duties. On Monday an arbitrator sided with Ms. Flores, and the title was hers once more. But it slipped from her grasp again on Tuesday when the runner-up, who replaced Ms. Flores in January, and the pageant director refused to accept the ruling and return the crown.
"I think it's just ludicrous," the 22-year-old Ms. Flores said. "I fought the good fight and I won. I am Miss Colorado."
Problems between Ms. Flores, the first Hispanic Miss Colorado in the pageant's 51-year history, and the Miss Colorado Scholarship Program board and its director, Yvonne Pederson, erupted late last year after Ms. Flores had already competed in the Miss America Pageant.
Initially the dispute appeared to be a struggle of a modern woman trying to conform to pageant rules that say a titleholder must be available at a moment's notice for a full year to appear at pageant-affiliated events. The dispute centered on issues like Ms. Flores' request to take a part-time holiday job, her decision to return to school as a music major at the University of Colorado, missed appearances and the fact that she booked her own speaking engagements for her anti-dropout platform in addition to the pageant board's schedule of appearances.
"The main problem was that we were not getting her cooperation, and we met constant resistance," Mrs. Pederson said. "She agreed to the terms of the contract when she signed it."
The dethroning of Ms. Flores attracted the media and the pro bono work of two lawyers, one of whom helped Ms. Flores sue the board for breach of contract in El Paso County Court in January. The case was transferred to Denver in February for arbitration.
"It is ego and power controlling these women," Walter Gerash, one of Ms. Flores' lawyers, said of the pageant board. Ms. Flores, he said, "was not the muzzled mannequin they wanted, so they fired her." He has also referred to the titleholder's contract as a "form of slavery."
The two sides agreed to have the matter settled by an arbitrator, Harold Reed, a retired judge. Last week he found in favor of Ms. Flores in a ruling that sharply criticized the pageant board. He found that Ms. Flores had received prior approval to work a part-time job, that she and her mother had been asked to help schedule appearances, that she missed two scheduled appearances because of a snowstorm and that an accusation that she failed to make an appearance in Russia was not only in error, but "casts a patina of skepticism over all the allegations made."
The judge also ruled that Ms. Flores was entitled to $153,250 in lawyers' fees and damages, including $40,000 for emotional harm and distress, and is still owed $9,000 in scholarship money.
"I have no idea where that money will come from," said Mrs. Pederson, who owns the state pageant franchise. "We do not have it. We are a nonprofit organization. We may have to file bankruptcy, the business will be defunct and there will be no program in Colorado."
Mrs. Pederson said that liability insurance will not cover the costs from the lawsuit and that she has lost pageant sponsors since the dispute began.
Although the board initially agreed to abide by the arbitration, it is seeking to have the decision vacated.
The fact that Ms. Flores is Hispanic has also been an issue. Each side says the other was the first to bring it up, but Mrs. Pederson says it was never a factor in any decision she made. She points out that she is the first Hispanic woman to run the franchise in Colorado (she is now using her maiden name, Ortega, in correspondence to the media), that at one board meeting she asked whether anyone was a racist (everyone said "no," she told a reporter), and that African-American women have been chosen as Miss Colorado.
Ms. Flores said that although racial discrimination was never part of the legal claims she made, "I personally feel that race did play a role."
The friction has torn apart the pageant board, all volunteers. Five of the 20 board members have resigned in protest of the treatment of Ms. Flores and have since been replaced. Others have sided with Mrs. Pederson and supported the runner-up, Gina Marie Waegele, as Miss Colorado.
Ms. Waegele, who could not be reached for comment, was calm at a news conference she held last week and said she was ready to fulfill her duties as Miss Colorado for the remainder of her tenure.
Meanwhile, preparations have been under way to choose the 1998 Miss Colorado next month.
"I am going to show up on June 13," Ms. Flores said, "and there may be two of us up there trying to put the crown on the new Miss Colorado."
That jeweled tiara -- which is taken out on loan from a local jeweler for special appearances only -- has more than symbolic significance: Gerash has suggested that its worth of approximately $100,000 should be added to the amount the board owes Ms. Flores if it does not abide by the ruling within 30 days.
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