Pageant News Bureau - Alicia Jaros

There was a big studio audience at Miss Teen USA 2002. There were fans of pageants, fans of feminine beauty, fans of hometown girls. Millions of TV viewers could hear those spectators cheering and applauding, but they couldn't see them most of the time. The lights were focused on the 51 young women onstage.

Most people in that crowd will never be any closer to fame than they were that August night. Many will never show up at a Miss Teen USA Pageant again. But Alicia Jaros is different. In 2002, she was sitting in the audience cheering for Miss Michigan Teen USA. In 2003, she will be one of the 51 young women standing onstage. Now she is Miss Michigan Teen USA.

In a way, Ms. Jaros has been preparing for the competition since she was 6. That's when she started singing in public. She heard the applause, she got the compliments, and she knew she wanted to be an entertainer.

"Singing is my thing," she says fondly. Her favorite numbers are country and Broadway songs, because "they show off your voice," but she may be most famous around Detroit for her pulse-quickening rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner." She has performed the anthem at high school games, and she longs to sing it for one of the Motor City's professional teams. We'd pay to hear it.

These days, a singer needs an adorable face and a lithe body as much as a good voice. Alicia Jaros has the whole package. She can act, too. She stole the show as Dorothy in a community theater production of "The Wizard of Oz."

She was also in an ambitious stage production of "Children of Eden," a play that follows the Genesis narrative from creation to Noah's Ark. She played Noah's wife, wearing makeup that made her look like an old woman.

Our PNB reporter had a couple of questions about this play. What about the animals on the ark?

"They were actors in costume." And what about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden? "Those were just costumes, excellent costumes. Nobody was naked." Nothing bare about those facts.

Ms. Jaros' experiences at Miss Teen USA 2002 and Miss Teen USA 2003 will have one thing in common PNB photographer Benjamin Gibbs. He was there to photograph her when she was a hopeful fan, and he will be there when she's a competitor. He also was there when she won the state crown. What a job!

Alicia Jaros joins the show