Police Intervened, and This Beauty Was Definitely <i> Not </i> Queen for a Day

Miss Torrance-Beach Cities Connie Leamon says she merely wanted her chance to wave at the crowds watching Torrance’s annual Armed Forces Day Parade.

Instead, she ended up arguing with another kind of armed force--the Torrance Police Department.

Leamon, 19, who was told in March that she would not receive an invitation from the city to be in the parade, said she accepted an offer from Cruisin’ 50s classic car club members to ride in one of their vehicles during last weekend’s event.

Eight police officers, however, stopped the white 1956 Thunderbird convertible in which she was riding and demanded that she remove her crown, sit down inside the car and take signs identifying her as a beauty queen off the car.

When she refused, they threatened to have the car towed away, she said.

“I thought it was kind of dramatic, the way they handled it,” she said. “It was embarrassing.”

Torrance Deputy Police Chief Jim Popp said that the incident was not aimed at Leamon and that officers responsible for organizing the parade were simply doing their job.

“We’ve been doing this parade since the Vietnam War days, and at that time we had a lot of people who wanted to ride in the parade with protest signs or without authorization,” Popp said. “We’ve always been very careful about who participates.”

The parade is just the latest in a string of troubles Leamon has encountered since she was crowned three months ago.

Criticized for not being a resident of Torrance, Leamon--who graduated in 1988 from the city’s West High School but has since moved to Lawndale--was told in March that she no longer would be welcome to make official appearances at Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce functions. At about the same time, Leamon heard that she would not be invited to ride in the Armed Forces Day Parade for similar reasons.

Last year, Leamon’s predecessor, Cheryl Anthony of Gardena, spent her first few weeks as queen trying--unsuccessfully--to talk the Torrance City Council out of eliminating its annual $750 donation for the pageant.

City officials have been irritated that the pageant, which last year changed its name from “Miss Torrance,” has always accepted contestants from throughout the South Bay. In recent years, few Torrance women have worn the crown.

And now, with donations down 60% from last year’s levels, the Miss Torrance-Beach Cities pageant is having troubles of its own, Executive Director Andrea Reeder said.

Frustrated that an $802 bill for the use of Miraleste High School’s auditorium has gone unpaid for nearly 12 weeks, Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District officials last week asked Torrance to help them get their money. School officials were unaware that Torrance no longer provides any funding for the pageant.

All that would be tough enough, Leamon said, but she also is busy preparing for next month’s Miss California Pageant in San Diego.

“I’ve been trying to keep all this inside and concentrate on the pageant, but things like that parade scene don’t make it easy,” she said.

Reeder, however, is bristling at accusations that she staged the incident for publicity or that Leamon was trying to crash the parade.

“This young lady was invited by a private party to ride in a private vehicle on behalf of the Cruisin’ 50s, and I don’t know of any law giving Torrance legal control over who rides in a private vehicle,” Reeder said.

“It is absurd to assume this was staged.”

Ken Thompson, the Torrance attorney who agreed to drive Leamon in his classic car, said he cannot understand what all the fuss was about.

“There was nothing obscene or unusual about the signs,” he said. “Then they told her she would have to take her crown off. What gives them a right to say how my passenger can dress?”

In the end, Thompson decided it would be easiest to back down.

“I saw tears were running down her cheeks, and I didn’t want her to sit up there and take that kind of humiliation,” he said.

“The whole thing was inexcusable.”