BY ROBYN SIDERSKY / THE FREE LANCE–STAR
In 2006, Tara Conner celebrated winning the Miss USA pageant. Next week, she will celebrate another milestone—seven years of sobriety. Today, she still looks like a beauty queen, sporting straight blonde hair, flawless makeup and a stylish outfit.
But underneath that polished image is a lot of pain. On Tuesday, she shared some of that pain and her experiences with drugs and alcohol with a group at the Caroline County Recovery Center.
Conner told them how she became an addict at 14 and didn’t turn things around until she had to take a drug test after winning the Miss USA crown. She said Donald Trump—the co-owner of the Miss Universe pageant—gave her a second chance if she promised to get treatment.
So, she did, after nearly losing her title.
Now, the Kentucky native talks to people who struggle with the pain she used to endure. “Hi, my name is Tara and I’m a recovering everything,” she told a circle of people Tuesday. She said traveling to Bowling Green, where the recovery center is located, felt like she was back home in Kentucky, in the small town where she grew up.
The reason she goes to small towns, like Bowling Green, is to spread awareness of support groups and recovery programs and the opportunities to change. When I lived in Kentucky, I didn’t know services were available,” she said.
Becoming a pageant competitor helped her “mask what was going on.” Her life changed overnight when she won Miss USA. “I had everything I could have ever dreamt of having,” she said. But when reports of her wild past got out and she nearly lost the crown, she had to change her behavior.
It was the week before her 21st birthday that she decided to become sober. Ironically, she’s never had a legal drink. When she began treatment, she couldn’t relate to those around her. But then their stories came out. “All of our stories were the same,” she said.
She said someone once told her, “you can’t save your face and your butt at the same time.” It means that you can’t paint a rosy picture of your life and expect to make any progress in recovery. “You have to be willing, going into these things, to get anything out of it,” she said.
The group Conner spoke with Tuesday wasn’t just addicts. Local pastors and Caroline’s Commonwealth Attorney Tony Spencer were also there to listen to Conner speak. Spencer said he wasn’t surprised she got treatment, but he wondered why she stuck with it. Conner said she was “emotionally and spiritually bankrupt.”
Mel Covington, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Bowling Green, asked how to catch issues early and educate young people, like those he works with in his church. Conner said the parents need to be educated and be truthful about the issues going on at home. She said it’s about opening up the lines of communication and giving the kids someone they can relate to. Conner said if someone like herself had come to speak to her when she was a teen, things would have been different.
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