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Jacquelynne Fontaine's father sits in a recliner. Nearby, a Miss California crown sits in a wooden box.
Fontaine, 23, knows she's lucky to have both.
Just as the Moorpark native wasn't expecting to be crowned Miss California 2006 on Saturday, Fontaine also didn't know her father suffered a stroke and was in the hospital for more than a week. At the request of her father, Victor Fontaine, 72, his health was kept a secret so she could remain focused during the 10-day competition.
"I put my best face to her, I didn't want to cause anxiety," said her mother, Donna Fontaine. "It was one of the most difficult things I've had to do in my life."
Donna Fontaine told her daughter that Victor Fontaine only had high blood pressure, a problem that he's had before. On Thursday, he was released from Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks and brought home.
He was sitting in a nearby room, resting, as mother and daughter prepared for Jacquelynne Fontaine's departure for San Diego. There, for three months, she will work with various pageant organizers, fashion experts, trainers and speech coaches to prepare for the preliminary Miss America competitions, which start in September. The final competition will be in January.
Looking back, Fontaine said she wishes she would have known about her father's condition but also recognizes she wouldn't have been at the top of her game.
"It would have been nice to know. But I would have felt silly standing up there, knowing what my parents were going through," she said.
After she won, she had obligations to visit different parts of the state, including a Fourth of July parade in Redwood City. A Ford dealership in San Jose gave her a car to drive for the year as Miss California. That's when her mother flew up to meet her, and the two drove back to Moorpark. Wednesday morning was when she was told about her father, three days after she was crowned.
"There were a lot of tears," Donna Fontaine said. "I was certain I was going to get a huge sock in the arm, but she understood."
Not only did her father, a philosophy professor at Moorpark College, suffer a stroke, but it was also discovered the same day that he has diabetes.
"It just makes you see how precious life is, and how everything fits in the scheme of life," Jacquelynne Fontaine said. "Now I can use (the Miss California title) to do something worthwhile."
Because her father was living with diabetes and didn't know it, Fontaine is changing her platform she will present to the judges. Rather than integrating music in education, her topic will be diabetes awareness. She just decided to change it Thursday.
"God had a reason for me to be there and get this job," she said. "There are 20 million people that know they have diabetes and 8 million that don't. Maybe this can help other people."
Normally after a state win, she would have been whisked off to train, but pageant organizers encouraged her to stay a few days with her father.
"They are a very close family," said Bob Arnhym, president of the Miss California Organization. "It may put us off a couple of days, but our problem is not as important as hers."
Fontaine, who graduated from California Lutheran University in 2004 and is pursuing a master's degree in voice at the University of Southern California, was crowned Miss California Saturday night at the Saroyan Theatre in Fresno. Fontaine represented Santa Barbara County in this year's event.
She attributes her victory to a calmness she had throughout the competition. While most treated the pageant as if it was going to be the crowning moment in their lives, she said, she didn't need it as much.
"The entire time I was just at peace," she said.
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