“I wanted to be a public role model for other young women, but she [Lancona] didn’t provide any way of doing that,” Krol said.
Lancona says there won’t be a Miss Newport Beach 2010 to crown anyway — she’s putting the Miss Newport Beach and its companion teen pageant on hiatus until August because of a lack of sponsors. The pageant in August will crown Miss Newport Beach 2011.
“We just want to provide a great platform for the girls in our city, but if it is going to be twisted into an ugly mess then I would rather have someone else give it a shot and see how they do,” Lancona said in a written statement.
Krol made a public appearance with Lancona on KOCI radio right after the pageant, Lancona said in an e-mail.
She would have arranged more appearances, but Krol never returned her phone calls, Lancona claims.
Krol said she was lead to believe that she could enter the Miss California USA pageant as Miss Newport Beach, if she won the title.
After being crowned, Krol contacted the Miss California USA Pageant and learned the Miss Newport Beach title had already been taken by another contestant, she claims.
The Miss California USA organizers said this week that their pageant is open to anyone and is not affiliated with the Newport Beach pageant.
Anyone can enter as Miss Newport Beach, provided they claim the title first, said Raquel Beezley, Miss California USA 2008, who is now an organizer for Miss California USA.
“If they promised the girls anything, it’s untrue,” she said.
Beezley said that although Miss California USA has arrangements with a few city pageants to reserve certain titles, it has no such agreement with the Newport Beach pageant. She went onto say that she had never heard of the Miss Newport Beach pageant.
