Beauty And The Beaker

Ginn never considered herself a "crown chaser," although she has dabbled in pageants since childhood. A dancer since age 2, Ginn admits she has "always loved being on a stage."

Each year, the Ginns drove from their home in Marmora to Atlantic City to watch the parade after a new Miss America was crowned. For Jamie, the desire to become Miss America was more a gradual reckoning than sudden epiphany.

At 18, she had her first shot. Finishing in the top 10 in the Miss New Jersey pageant, she tried again three years later and made second runner-up. Her mother, LeeAnn, shuttled between the pageant and the hospital, where Jamie's 9-year-old sister, Summer, was recovering from surgery to remove 18 inches of her intestine. LeeAnn remembers watching that pageant and realizing that Jamie would lose.

"I was devastated," LeeAnn recalls. She headed to church and prayed: Please help me understand what we did wrong. Afterward, she told Jamie that she felt as if God had spoken to her. "You have to make Crohn's your platform," her mother urged.

Summer had received a diagnosis of Crohn's disease, an incurable inflammatory bowel disorder, at 6. She had gone off to second grade pumped full of steroids that ballooned her tiny body and tinged her skin blue. A feeding tube was taped to her face.

By then, pageant scholarships were paying Jamie's way through nearby Rowan University. DuPont recruited her before graduation, after she delivered a paper on diesel emissions to a professional conference in California. She credits pageants for turning her into an extrovert and developing her public speaking skills.

Before entering the workforce, though, Ginn decided to take another stab at Miss New Jersey. She won the talent and swimsuit competitions, but finished as first runner-up.

"I thought it was because my platform was 'offensive,' and that hurt me at my core," she says. She was done with pageants.

Making the Grade

Flat-out competition to be the most beautiful girl might seem petty and superficial, but the undeclared contests to be the smartest are far more ruthless, Ginn knew.

She had always been a good student, a self-described math geek whose father made no secret of his desire to someday have a doctor in the family. Dance was Jamie's true passion. Her parents had decorated her room like a studio, with a wall of mirrors, Hollywood lights and a ballet barre to practice on.

In the eighth grade, she got the highest GPA in the class. The girl who came in second belonged to the "prettiest, most popular crowd." She played field hockey, and the entire team decided that Jamie Ginn was now their collective enemy.

Whenever she walked into a classroom, Ginn remembers, she would see the letters "JSMD" scrawled on the blackboard. The same thing appeared on spirit buttons the field hockey team began sporting. Finally, a friend explained the shorthand: Jamie Slut Must Die.