Cara Rudd taps one foot constantly, speaks in a rapid fire stream, boils over with ideas.
Even in casual chat one can hardly shake the impression that a powerful engine idles just beneath her skin. And it’s easy to understand how, with so much energy to spare, this 5-foot-3 inch, 22-year-old woman accomplished so much in her whirlwind year as Miss Auburn.
Things that went beyond the royal duties like ribbon cuttings and visiting every local scholarship pageant across the state in preparation for the Miss Washington contest, where she took third runner-up.
Rudd can lay claim to rock solid accomplishments, especially her collaboration with Auburn School District Superintendent Kip Herren to form a pilot program for fifth-grade special education students. This was the realization of her platform – working with students with disabilities.
At the Miss Washington Pageant, Rudd received the Miss Miracle Maker Award from Children’s Miracle Network after she raised more than $11,000 for distribution to Seattle Children’s Hospital.
Rudd will be at the Auburn Performing Arts Center on Saturday night to crown her successor at the conclusion of the Miss Auburn Scholarship Pageant.
And as she looks forward to the next phase of her life, she can look back on a year full of surprises.
And how her volunteer efforts at Children’s Hospital changed her forever.
“The first time I went in there, there was an 11-year-old girl completely undressed, diapered, laying on the outside of a sheet,” Rudd recalled. “She was stitched from the bottom of her chin to her navel because she just had a heart transplant. I just broke (down). That was very transformative for me. I saw life in a completely different perspective.”
That Rudd became Miss Auburn at all contains its own irony.
When Rudd got her first close-up look at the Miss Auburn pageant at 12, she didn’t like it one bit.
“Walking around in a dress and a swimsuit?” Rudd recalled with a laugh. “I thought the whole thing was a joke. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous.”
But the time spent with the contestants lead her to a sparkling insight — that the pageant handed the winner a golden opportunity to leave a lasting legacy to her community.
“Certainly, anybody can serve their community, male, female, crowned or not crowned,” Rudd said. “What the Miss Auburn title gave me was a platform to launch some of the things that I really wanted to do for the community of Auburn.”
She seized the opportunity and ran with it.
“I came into it with a very specific agenda of what I wanted to accomplish, and I am proud to say that has happened,” Rudd said. “There hasn’t been a lot of room for goofiness. And let’s face it, when you have a platform and have something you want to promote and advocate and educate on, and you have only a year to make that happen, every moment of your year of service is going to be spent very intentionally, making sure you are in the right place at the right time.
“That’s my version of fun: making things happen, getting things done, leaving a lasting legacy.”
Preparing to relinquish the crown has been tougher on her than she had expected.
“I thought I was ready to be done, and in many ways I am. But it’s hard because you are at all the events with the same people over and over again,” Rudd said. “I think what helped me pull together was that regardless of the crown, I will still have those partnerships and friendships and they will continue.
“I probably won’t miss the ribbon cuttings and those kinds of events, but as far as the people that I consistently see giving to the community, and being a part of that, that is something that I will absolutely miss.”
Rudd, who has a BA in marketing and communications from Seattle Pacific University, is now enrolled in UW Tacoma’s fundraising management certificate program. She also has a full-time job with Olive Crest, a social service agency dedicated to preventing child abuse, to treating and educating at-risk children and to preserving the family.
Rudd left a lasting impression on those who worked with her, including Tami Bothell, vice president of the Miss Auburn Scholarship Pageant Board of Directors.
“We were so fortunate to have her as Miss Auburn this year,” Bothell said. “Cara is unique in that she has taken her platform and really gone into the schools, partnered with parents worked her platform into the community. Often times they have a platform and they share it, but don’t really take it that next level. She did that all on her own. She’s an amazing young woman, and we have been so blessed.”
MISS AUBURN PAGEANT
• When:
• Where: Auburn Performing Arts Center, 700 E. Main St.
• Field: 21 contestants
• Theme: ‘Lights, Camera, Action, a Salute to Hollywood’
• Sponsor: Auburn Noon Lions Club
• Tickets, info: 253-833-1687, www.missauburn.org
