Sea Change

A few years ago, Veronica Kay and her family received food donations from friends. Now the Newport Harbor High junior turns down $1,600-a-day modeling jobs to go surfing.

At 16, Veronica is not only pretty enough to model bikinis and board shorts for clothing companies such as Roxy, the hot juniors line from Costa Mesa-based Quiksilver, but she’s also a champion surfer.

Photographs of her have run in national magazines, including Seventeen and Surfer. This year she won Seventeen’s New Star Showcase, a contest identifying the “new face to look for” that supermodel Niki Taylor won about five years ago.

She surfed in Hawaii for a Roxy shoot, and she accompanied 14 other surfers--all boys--to Tahiti for an editorial spread in Wave Action magazine. She’ll attend modeling shoots in New York this fall and in Bali in May.

In June, Veronica won her first national competition at Trestles, a surf spot near San Clemente.

“It was then that I decided I wanted to be a world champion,” she says.

While those who see Veronica riding the waves and posing for photographers may envy her carefree existence, they don’t know her whole story.

“People look at Veronica and think, ‘Oh, she has it all. She’s never known pain,’ ” says her mother, Vanessa James. “Well, sorry. There isn’t much this little one hasn’t seen.”

Veronica grew up in La Jolla and attended private school, but her life was never easy.

Her mother and father divorced when she was 6. Her mother was often strapped for money, and two older siblings struggled with drug addiction. In September, she and her mother moved to Newport Beach, where they rent a couple of rooms in a private home.

“I was the youngest, and I was the one keeping everyone together, the one who said, ‘C’mon guys, we can do this,’ ” Veronica says.

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At 13, she picked up a surfboard and rode her first wave. From that day on she quit every other sport and devoted herself to surfing.

“It was an outlet for me. Where there were problems and things were really hard at home, I could just go surfing,” she says.

She could paddle into the ocean and forget that the family barely had enough to eat and that friends sometimes brought groceries.

“People who do drugs don’t have a passion for life,” Veronica says. “If you have a passion, it’s a lot easier to stay on track. If you have something you love to do, you have an identity. If not, you try to grab onto things that make you feel good at a certain time.”

Veronica recently appeared on the “Leeza” TV show to try to dissuade others from trying drugs.

“I’m a good example that you can be a victim of circumstances or rise above them,” she says.

“My brother was going to be a professional skateboarder, but he hurt himself and couldn’t skate for a year. That’s when everything went downhill.”

(Her brother, 22, and sister, 25, now attend community colleges in Southern California and are drug free.)

“We’re really close. They’re my No. 1 fans,” she says. “I wouldn’t trade my mom, brother or sister for the world. I’m a much stronger person” because of them.

While attending an amateur surf contest in May 1996, Veronica was spotted by a representative from Quiksilver who manages team riders, surfers sponsored by the company in exchange for wearing and promoting its merchandise.

Soon she was one of Roxy’s favorite models and a team rider. Her lanky 5-foot-11-inch body and sunny looks suited Roxy’s athletic, surfer-girl style.

“She surfs, and it just so happens she’s absolutely adorable and has an amazing figure,” says Amy Patrick, marketing representative for Roxy.

Now Veronica has half a dozen sponsors, including sunglass-maker Oakley of Foothill Ranch, that help pay her way on the surf circuit. She also earns money from modeling jobs.

“Since I did my first photo shoot with Roxy, it’s been nonstop,” she says.

Veronica has signed with the Next and United Talent agencies in Los Angeles and has appeared in TV and print ads for Union Bay jeans, Sunglass Hut, J. Crew and others.

Veronica has proved she’s more than just a pretty face with a surfboard. People are often surprised to find she can really ride.

“It’s interesting to see their reaction,” she says. “At first they don’t take me seriously. They’re like, ‘Oh, she’s just a model.’ ”

Surf contest promoter Allan Seymour of Capistrano Beach was one of those who underestimated Veronica--until he saw her surf.

“The first image I saw of her was a picture of her at Waikiki holding a board and kind of looking over her shoulder and laughing. So I figured, ‘Oh, she’s a model. She can’t surf.’ Then I found out she’s one of the top short-board women in the world. I was like, ‘Wow,’ ” Seymour says.

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While most girls would envy her modeling career, if Veronica had to choose between surfing and modeling, she’d grab her board.

She recently tried to make a casting tryout for a modeling job in L.A. and a qualifying round for a surf contest on the same day.

Veronica and her mother were driving to the model tryout when they realized that traffic was so heavy, they would miss the surf heat in Orange County if they continued.

They turned the car around.

“It’s a hard choice. Do I go to L.A. and possibly make $1,600 a day for four days of shooting or try to qualify for a surf contest? We blew off the casting job,” Veronica says. “I’ll model as long as it doesn’t interfere with my surfing.”

Veronica wakes early to surf, then attends school. Afterward, she heads down 34th Street in Newport and paddles back into the water.

“It’s a way for me to be by myself,” she says.

After she graduates next year, Veronica wants to turn pro and qualify for a slot on the world championship tour.

“Modeling is just a real easy way for me to earn the money I need,” she says. “Surfing is my life.”