Miss Teen USA 2003 - Dreams Can Come True

"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

Who amongst you believes that your dreams can come true? Maybe you might think that it's really other people's dreams that come true — never yours! If you don't believe that dreams can happen, negative thinking might be one of the reasons why they haven't — you have to think positive!

Tami Farrell, Miss Teen USA 2003, has a positive mindset. As a matter of fact, she has had positive reinforcement most of her life — from her family! "You can do anything you want to do. If you fall down, just get up and try again," are the words she's heard from her father since she was a little girl.

Growing up on a farm in Phoenix, Oregon and being the only girl with one older and one younger brother, Tami probably did fall down a lot — literally. She was the first girl to play on the boy's baseball team, and during her debut season, she hit the winning grand slam in the team's final game. When she was 12 she won second place at a local rodeo.

She says, "I was really a tomboy and I never really brushed my hair." But regardless of that, she also dreamed of one day becoming a model, a singer, and an actress. "My parents really didn't want me to get into modeling and acting until I was in high school because they wanted me to have a normal childhood and not chase crazy dreams. When I was younger, I took some singing lessons then I went away from it for a little bit."

Tami has returned to her interest in music. She has taken guitar lessons from friends, and lately has been composing songs. Country is her favorite form of music, and she loves "I'm Going to Be Somebody" by Travis Tritt. She explained why, "It's a song about someone who is from a small town, someone who has big dreams. You know how people don't always believe in other people's dreams? It's not necessarily that they don't think that they are possible, it's just that they think the dreams are such big dreams maybe you should think about something a little smaller."

Surprisingly, her modeling career took off without her even trying. "I got lucky," she said. "I ran into people randomly on the street that approached me and said that I had the look they were looking for. I was very fortunate in that sense. So I've done some runway work, as well as some commercial print work. My favorite job was the bathing suit work I did for a surfing company. It was really funny because I was representing the California surfing girl image, but here I was an Oregon farm girl. They taught me how to surf and that was a lot of fun. It was a good experience."

Tami made the most out of her high school years. She worked hard to keep her grades up — graduating with a 3.2 GPA. For the first three years, she was president of each of her classes, and she was elected All Body President during her senior year. She was a volunteer with The Children's Miracle Network, the American Red Cross, and she was the organizer of her school's chapter of the Sparrow Club. The whole school adopted one family who had a 6-year-old daughter with a heart condition. The school raised money to help pay for her medical needs. "Actually," she said, "the club was founded by a little boy. He had special needs and his teacher's son faced a lot of medical problems and illnesses. The teacher's medical insurance was dropped, so this little boy wanted to help out his teacher and that is how this whole thing sort of got started. So our school adopted the program. It had been a state club, but it has gone national. There are clubs in other states."

Tami fell ill in her junior year and missed school for a couple of months. She required a tutor to help her with some of her class work.

So how does a farm girl from Oregon get to be Miss Teen USA? A family friend encouraged Tami to compete in the state competition for Miss Teen Oregon. "I did it for two years and I was a semi finalist. I wasn't going to do it any more, but my family encouraged me." And as the saying goes — the rest is history!

During her reign, Tami will spend her year as youth advocate focusing on self-esteem issues, anti-violence and anti-drug campaigns.

* Reprinted from Positive Teens Magazine Volume 5 Issue 5, Sept/Oct 2003

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