You won’t see her wearing her sash and crown down Main Avenue.
But Lea Tucson, 2014 Miss Oklahoma U.S. International, is in town visiting her father, Izzy Tucson.
“This was my first year doing pageants,” Lea Tucson, 19, said Friday. “My ultimate goal is to win scholarship money.”
Her grandfather and father own the Tucson Barber Shop, a Durango institution.
She is a fourth-generation member of the Southern Ute Indian Tribe.
Just finishing her freshman year at Oklahoma State University at Oklahoma City, Tucson is studying health exercise and promotions with a minor in nutrition.
“My platform is ‘moving to get fit,’” she said. “I go to elementary schools and join (physical education) classes to show them my favorite moves, like jumping the river, with two jump ropes moved farther apart as time goes by.”
Her next step is to compete in the Miss U.S. International pageant from June 23 to 28 in Kissimmee, Florida.
There, the top prize gives the winner $20,000 and a trip to Okinawa, Japan, to compete in the Miss International finals.
Tucson is the daughter of Shellie Nelson of Oklahoma and the granddaughter of Amador and Benny Tucson of Durango.
Her little sister, Mariah Tucson, will start her senior year at Durango High School in the fall.
abutler@durangoherald.com
