AURORA, Colo.—When she was little, Chloe Johnson would sometimes be woken up in the middle of the night by her mother, who came into her room bearing bottles of nail polish and topics for heart-to-heart conversations.
Memories like “girlfriend time” are what carried this year’s Miss Black Colorado through a tumultuous period in middle school when she lived with two foster care families for 14 months.
“The foster care experience was, I think, a blessing in disguise, because it made me appreciate my mom more,” said Chloe, 21.
Her journey from a foster care child who felt like the world had given up on her to beauty queen and reality television star was fraught with challenges, but she’s managed to overcome them all with poise.
Chloe was in fourth grade when she left her home at the request of Social Services because her mother was a victim of domestic violence. There is a perception that foster children grow up to be criminals and drug addicts, she said, which made her feel like a failure in the eyes of her case-workers.
“It’s almost like they treat you like a business relationship, not like they’re raising a child,” she said.
Although she had no complaints about her two foster families, she said celebrating Christmas and her birthday without her mother was difficult to bear.
“Even though I’ve had so many birthdays with my mom since, it’s like that one when you’re not with them makes you really realize how much you love or care for someone,” she said.
In sixth grade, she moved back in with her mother, but it wasn’t easy.
“It was that weird transition,” she said. “It’s the craziest thing psychologically.”
Now, the slim, stylish, dark-skinned stunner with a passion for cello and giving hugs to strangers says that part of her life seems like a dream. “It’s almost unbelievable.”
Last October, Chloe was named Miss Black Colorado 2011 and in between guest appearances, school and work, she’s perfecting her cello-playing talent for the Miss Black USA competition held in Washington, D.C., this August.
It was Rhoda, Chloe’s mother, who convinced her to enter the pageant. As a former model, Rhoda knew her daughter had the looks and the personality to win the competition.
“When I heard about the pageant I thought, ‘She’s a winner,'” Rhoda said. There was no worry in Rhoda’s mind that a beauty pageant would make her daughter self-absorbed or image conscious.
But the irony is that Chloe did have one rule growing up: no professional modeling. Rhoda, who spent most of her modeling career in Los Angeles, wanted to shelter Chloe from that lifestyle.
“I didn’t want her to be so focused on that, that she wasn’t a giving person, a loving person, and a compassionate person,” Rhoda said. “It was more important for me that she got into cello, Girl Scouts and political organizations at her school.”
In December, Chloe will graduate from the University of Colorado at Denver with a degree in political science and aspires to attend law school and start her own ‘politics for dummies’ website.
“Politics is like football,” she said. “If you don’t know about it, at first it seems really confusing and foreign, it seems really technical. But once you get the grasp of things it’s really something tangible.”
She’s testified on bills concerning foster care and says her best advice for children who have been unwillingly separated from their parents is to be optimistic.
“I want those girls and guys to see that I was exactly where they were, and now I’m graduating college and I have such a great life,” she said.
She has also interned for state Sen. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, and at Colorado Legislative Services, a lobbyist firm that represents her employer, satellite provider DirecTV. Throughout college she has worked full time, and her determination and diligence as a customer service representative helped her land a role on the reality television show “Undercover Boss” which aired last October. The chief executive of DirecTV, who acted on the show as a trainee of Chloe’s, was so impressed by her life story and her commitment to her job that he created a scholarship fund and awarded her with $10,000 to help pay for college.
She’s humbled about the experience, but embarrassed that she was the only one out of four DirecTV employees who cried out of happiness on the show.
Rhoda says she’s proud of her daughter but not surprised that she’s accomplished so much.
“She’s a gift,” said Rhoda, who owns an Aurora-based makeup and jewelry company. “I feel like I’ve given birth to my best friend.”
Of course, Chloe went through a teenage phase where she resented Rhoda and there were times when the pair didn’t see eye-to-eye. But their bond has never been stronger.
On Chloe’s 21st birthday, Rhoda took Chloe on a trip to California and presented her with a journal she kept while she was pregnant, chock-full of thoughts and dreams she had for her daughter.
Rhoda says the traits she most admires about Chloe are the same that helped her win the beauty pageant, she says.
“She has such a wonderful way of teaching us all to live in the moment and to forgive,” Rhoda said. “I know that everybody around her would say the same thing. I know that’s what, more than anything, helped her win the pageant, more than the looks and the poise—it was her spirit.”
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Information from: The Aurora Sentinel,
