RHINESTONE WOW GIRL

Twenty-two-year-old Brandy DeJongh is Miss Rodeo America 2000 and, as such, an official spokesperson for the Professional Rodeo Cowboy Assn. She loves her parents, God, her horses (Hobby’s Major and Horse) and the friends she’s kept from high school. She has been to Paris, New York and Las Vegas, but her favorite place on earth right now is the place she grew up, Leona Valley. An hour and a half outside of Los Angeles and 20 minutes west of Palmdale, Leona Valley is nestled in the hills of the high desert. Churches, horse farms, orchards, modest ranch homes on generous plots and Joshua trees dot the road into this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hamlet.

Hobby and Horse meander in the front yard of the house in which DeJongh grew up. An electric gate keeps the horses in and intruders out. Her dad Dana is an LAPD officer in the San Fernando Valley and was a member of the department’s first mounted unit. Her mom, Gail, works as a dental assistant down the road in Palmdale.

DeJongh is about 5-foot-7 and one of those women who do far more to themselves than necessary in the name of beauty. This day, though, she is home visiting her family, and DeJongh, who is still wearing enough makeup for a State Dinner, insists that she resists the beauty queen lacquered look when she’s representing the rodeo. “Rodeo is real,” she explains. “We like our girls to look real. [But] if I didn’t wear makeup, I’d look 16,” she contends, and she is probably right.

Just southwest of where she is standing is a city packed with women who have spent millions in an attempt to go back to looking 16, but DeJongh spends her money on makeup--Estee Lauder, she says--in an attempt to look exactly her age, maybe even a little older. When working a Look involves getting and keeping the attention of people hundreds of yards away while you’re on a galloping horse in the hot sun, dust rising around you, holding an American flag and wearing a cowboy hat and chaps fringed in metallic red, white and blue, extreme measures are called for. “I’ve said Estee Lauder a million times, hoping they’ll give me an endorsement, but I’ll say it again anyway. It stands up to the heat.”

Combat-ready makeup isn’t the only way rodeo queens pull out the big guns, says DeJongh. “This is the first time in five weeks that my hair has been straight,” she admits with a laugh. “It’s always curly when I’m working--I use this spray called Focus 21. It feels like steer adhesive, but it gives you more of a feminine look under a hat.” This is important, she explains, since protocol dictates that the Miss Rodeo America crown--made of Black Hills gold studded with Alexandrites and pearls--is always worn on the crown of a cowboy hat, never on the head.

The level of focus DeJongh projects makes it hard to believe she was ever 16. Ask her about her clothes and she can tell you who’s responsible for every stitch, where the manufacturer is headquartered and the name of her contact there. As if anticipating an eventual question on charges that rodeo events are cruel to animals, DeJongh slips in the fact that there are more than 60 rules and regulations dictated by the rodeo association that govern the humane treatment of animals, and that she is expected to know all of them.

Her purse is a briefcase. “I have cards, Neosporin for when my ears get infected, a stack of photos, pens to sign autographs.” Her business manager, Raeana Wadhams, works for Miss Rodeo America and says the pageant supplies its representative with between 15,000 and 20,000 pads of paper each year for signing autographs.

When she started her tour, her parents gave her a cell phone with 1,500 minutes a month. “They expect me to call every night, and I do,” she adds.

She has two rooms in her parents’ home. One is where she sleeps when she’s home. It has a small stereo and photos of her friends.

Her other room--”my friends call this the walk-in closet”--is a rodeo queen’s fashion dream. More clothes, from Manuel (Cuevas, Nashville’s country couturier ) to Wrangler, and enough Justin boots to outfit an army of rodeo girls, including one pair executed in alligator. Move over, Manolo. Her hats are provided by Resistol. Her rodeo queen fashion trademark is cowhide, which accents all of her important official outfits.

On a chalkboard in the room, DeJongh has written her “to do” list: mostly phone calls that must be returned and details that need to be tended to. On one corner, a friend has written, “Brandy is a beautiful queen, but kind of a dork.”

In the hallway is a photo of a young girl. “That’s my Little Miss,” she says, explaining that the older contestants adopt the younger contestants on the circuit, acting as big sisters to the girls.

Nearby is a rolling rack festooned with blazers, pants and shirts. “I’m a blazer girl,” DeJongh says, showing off her newest acquisition--a fake python blazer she bought in Paris, where she went during the week of the fashion collections to help L.A. photographer Lisa Eisner promote her book “Rodeo Girl.” The book party, she says, was held at Collette. “It was the party of Fashion Week.” She toured Paris in full rodeo queen regalia, she says. “I don’t think they’d ever seen anyone like us. We’d sit down in a cafe and people would be banging on the windows trying to get our attention.”

Trophies and ribbons abound in both of DeJongh’s rooms, and there’s a photo in one showing her at age 3 on her first horse. “I told you I started riding young,” she smiles. She is an excellent rider, having competed in junior rodeo (a sort of Western gymkhana), barrel racing and reining, which is important, since a rodeo queen is expected to help out in the ring as well as be able to speak to the local Jaycees or Lions Club and make appearances on local TV. “We are queens, but underneath that, we’re basically cowgirls,” she says.

The “we” refers to her friends. Tania Burton, 24, grew up in Leona Valley and met DeJongh at age 7 through the 4-H Club. She works at nearby Rancho Petersen, training quarter horses and teaching children how to ride. “I raised pigs and she raised sheep and pigs,” Burton says of their 4-H days.

“You know, to weigh these pigs, you’ve gotta catch ‘em to get ‘em on the scale, and by the time you do that, you’re filthy. Brandy was wrestling pigs in the mud and now she’s Miss Rodeo America,” laughs Burton.

Kristal Nessa, 22, a biology major on a softball scholarship at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, has known DeJongh since her freshman year of high school. “We met in cheerleading tryouts, and I played soccer with her junior year,” Nessa says.

“She is awesome,” says Nessa of her friend. “She is exactly what they need representing rodeo, America for that matter.

“We’re both daddy’s girls and close to our moms. I don’t know if it’s because of where we grew up, but all of us have morals and values that we cherish.”

DeJongh’s father admits he worries about her, but says the wholesome atmosphere of rodeo makes it easier. “She’s out there, she’s attractive, but I know her manager makes her arrangements, and someone’s always there to meet her at the airport and get her where she needs to go. And the guys in rodeo, well, there’s no swearing, they always congratulate the winner, even if it’s someone they just competed with; there’s a real emphasis on sportsmanship. You don’t see any of the problems you see with the NBA.”

Her manager estimates that DeJongh will travel more that 100,000 miles this year. She receives a modest stipend and her expenses are covered by the organizer of the event at which she appears. Miss Rodeo America charges $100 a day for any appearance, and she receives half of that as well. “We realize it’s not much comparatively,” Wadhams says, “but most of rodeo is volunteers, and if we raised the fee, a lot of them couldn’t afford to bring her in.”

When she finishes her year as Miss Rodeo America, DeJongh plans to complete her training as a dental assistant at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. It’s only 31/2 hours from home, and she plans to “go home just about every weekend.” While she has enjoyed her travels, it has made her value even more where she comes from.

“I love where I live. It’s pretty and green and I live close to a big city but it’s out in the country.” Besides, she says, “I can’t leave my horses behind.”