The Short, Sad Reign of Miss Barstow

Emily Arnold survived the evening-gown competition, displaying poise in the face of harrowing adversity: A power outage forced her to buy the dress at Sears, the only store in the mall with its own generator. She survived the tense interview with judges. She survived the swimsuit competition.

But she could not avoid the perils of life in a small town.

In late May, weeks after she was named Miss Barstow before 1,000 at the Barstow High School boy’s gym, Emily was celebrating a traditional senior night of mischief with friends, reveling in her crown, her 18th birthday, her pending graduation, her acceptance to the University of Arizona.

At a rival classmate’s house, she impulsively grabbed a piece of chalk and scrawled the words “NOT NICE” and “MEAN” on a car windshield. The schoolmate’s father, a California Highway Patrol sergeant, caught her in the act, called for backup--three squad cars showed up--and had her and six friends arrested. The father wants the district attorney to file charges of vandalism.

Tonight, Emily Arnold--cheerleader, honor student and class treasurer, so long the beneficiary of small-town life, now the victim of it--will give back her crown.

The sudden controversy has left Barstow divided.

“There are some people who felt that she should be asked to leave [the position], and others who felt that she should not,” said Kris Watson, director of the Miss Barstow contest for the last 12 years. “I know she regrets it. I just regret that they were caught.”

Many in town, pointing out that the chalk easily washed off, believe the incident should have been dismissed as a kids-will-be-kids prank. But it’s too late for that now. At the Kiwanis Club’s weekly meeting at the Quality Inn, Emily will hand her tiara to the runner-up. And then the former Miss Barstow 2001 will leave town.

“The worst thing she could think of to write on the car was ‘MEAN,’ ” Emily’s mother, Patricia, said between sobs.

“She’s such a good girl. You never have to ask her to put her dishes away. She comes home when we tell her to. She doesn’t drink, doesn’t swear, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t have sex with boys. And now they’re making her out to be some sort of horrible vandal. This town is hurting my little girl. It’s all just so terrible.”

Last Answer Was Pageant Clincher

It began in the dark and ended in the spotlight.

Swamped with the mass of extra-curricular activities expected of Barstow’s good kids, Emily had left herself just a couple of hours to shop for her pageant gown. At the mall, a rolling blackout hit, and Emily had to grab the only dress she could, a golden number that was a little too short, at Sears.

The five judges, however, were pros, imported from outside the region to maintain the pageant’s integrity. Though one of the judges would later tell her privately to burn the gown, they would never deduct points for a dress.

“The judges don’t necessarily score them down for the gown, because they know that’s something that can be changed,” Watson said. “You want to know how they carry off that elegance on stage, whether they are smooth or whether they clomp around on stage. And Emily is definitely smooth.”

As the crimson mane she inherited from her grandfather cascaded down her shoulders, she delicately walked the prescribed pattern on stage as the judges weighed her grace and her physical fitness.

During her private interview with the judges, a portion of the competition worth almost a third of the final score, she stumbled a bit into beauty-pageant speak when the judges asked her to name three things she would most like to change. She answered: communism (she said she wasn’t “particularly fond” of it), the Middle East conflict and world hunger.

“I couldn’t believe I said ‘world hunger,’ ” she said. “It’s just so cliche.”

But she recovered nicely, remembering to thank her sponsor, Barstow Tire & Brake, then dropping the bomb when each of the eight contestants was asked one last question onstage. A frequent performer in school plays, she was asked with whom she would like to perform. Her answer: Gene Kelly. She just loves the way he danced with that umbrella, she said. Her friends in the audience cheered. Parents nodded knowingly to each other. “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, I think I’m going to win,’ ” Emily said.

And then she did. When her name was announced and the music swelled, she held her trembling fingers to her face, just like the coaches tell them not to, just like the winners always do. Last year’s winner, Betsy Dillingham, placed the crown on her head, then leaned in close for a hug.

“Close your mouth,” Betsy whispered.

It was too late. The next morning, the Desert Dispatch newspaper carried an enormous photo of her. “They got her with her mouth open,” her mother said. “She looked at the picture and said, ‘Mom, I look like a dead fish.’ ”

But those were sweet days, and she laughed off the picture.

“Somebody pinch me,” she said.

Toilet Paper and Chalk Graffiti

Two months later, she got pinched.

Emily had taken part in the annual senior scavenger hunt, trying in vain at one point to borrow a brass Buddha statue from the Cantonese restaurant. When that didn’t work, she and a group of friends went to Wal-Mart and bought dozens of rolls of toilet paper, then headed out on the town.

“It was my first toilet-papering experience,” she said.

At 11 p.m., they wound up in front of the home of Hayley Clair, a classmate of Emily at Barstow High. Emily and Hayley were, in many ways, similar kids--both popular, both cheerleaders, both honor students, both student-government representatives. “Maybe that’s why we clashed,” Emily said.

They were small-town rivals. No one’s sure why it started. It just did.

“They tried to get along for a while,” Patricia Arnold said. “You know how some people just don’t get along?”

The Clairs, like many in the desert area, don’t have any trees in their yard, which made it tough to coat the lot in toilet paper. But Emily had a hunk of chalk, and spotted Hayley’s Saturn in front of the house. She wrote the words Barstow would soon know well: “NOT NICE” and “MEAN.”

Suddenly, Hayley’s father, CHP Sgt. Stan Clair, pulled into the driveway. The teenagers sped away in a truck, but realized he was following and decided to go back, clean up the mess and apologize.

Three Highway Patrol squad cars were waiting for them. Seven teenagers, including Emily, were arrested. Emily says she was handcuffed.

Hayley Clair is out of town and could not be reached for comment. Her father did not return phone calls seeking comment.

“I confessed right there that I had written on the car,” Emily said. “I thought we would be detained, yelled at, then sent home. I thought that would be it. I didn’t think it would be a big deal.”

‘She Saved the Pageant’

But it was the kind of thing that can light a fire in a town like Barstow, population 23,050, home to 12 mobile home parks and many more cactuses, a place known best as a halfway point: It’s midway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

The Miss Barstow pageant has had trouble getting contestants because the winner is expected to stick around for a year, and “most girls of that age look at leaving town,” Watson said. Still, it’s a big deal. The winner will make as many as 200 appearances during her reign, from ribbon cuttings at hair salons to Easter egg distributions at the veteran’s home.

“This isn’t a normal pageant,” said Bea Lint, president of the Kiwanis Club, which sponsors the competition. “This is a job.”

After word of her arrest got around, it seemed everyone had an opinion. Many believed that as one of the most visible representatives of Barstow, Emily needed to step down.

Emily asked the community for a second chance, even offering to change the mission of her reign to cleaning up graffiti. But Stan Clair, a member of the school board, insisted on pressing charges of vandalism, a crime that can bring a $1,000 fine and a year in jail.

Some criticize him for that, pointing out his own daughter had been accused of shooting a neighbor’s house and car with a paint-ball gun only hours before the notorious chalk incident. That situation, they say, was resolved without need for law enforcement.

Gary Roth, San Bernardino County’s supervising deputy district attorney in Barstow, said Wednesday that the case is under review, and that he is waiting for more information before deciding whether the case should move forward.

“Everybody was [debating] her character back and forth,” Watson said. “I thought, how much more can a young woman take?”

Last week, she broke, sending a letter to the Kiwanis Club saying that she would resign her crown. Some in town are still putting a pretty face on it, saying that she stepped down because she had been given a trip to Paris as a graduation present and because she wants to go to college--two adventures that her Miss Barstow responsibilities would preclude.

“I think for a young woman to make that kind of decision is really amazing,” Lint said. “When you earn something like that, to give it up is really something.”

But to most, it’s pretty clear that the graffiti incident prompted the decision. Watson says Emily is a hero.

“She saved the pageant,” Watson said. “I admire her and respect her.”

Emily seems to be one of the few folks in town trying to stay above the fray. Friday morning, she will leave for Arizona, where she and her great aunt will work out details of her trip to Paris. After she won the pageant, she turned down the University of Arizona, but now plans to attend a community college in Arizona, then transfer to the university in a year or two.

Wednesday, she played with her cat, Bit, and flipped through her yearbook. “Emily, you are a straight-up criminal,” wrote a friend who was there that night. “Considering we were arrested together, that means we stick together as friends.”

She watched a video of the pageant one more time, looking away at the moment she told the judges that she is “nice to everybody.”

A copy of “It’s a Wonderful Life” was on top of the television.

She said it’ll be good to leave town.

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “It’s just not fun anymore.”