Miss Sonoma County crowns first openly gay winner

She has short brown hair, she speaks candidly about being sexually assaulted and she’s currently in a relationship with a woman.

Crowned on Saturday at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park, Rhiannon Jones is the first openly gay Miss Sonoma County in the competition’s 73-year history.

“It’s so much pressure, but I really want to come to a time where being gay is not a big deal,” said Jones, 21.

While there’s added pressure in being the first, Jones said she hopes to “open the door” for others and she’s excited about the public role she’ll fill in the next year.

“She is aware that she has an opportunity to embrace a segment of our population that has never been represented in our program before,” said Tony Geraldi, secretary and treasurer of the competition for 18 years.

A senior at Sonoma State University, Jones is majoring in art with a focus on sculpture and she’s obtaining a teaching credential, as well. For the talent portion of the competition, she speed painted a phoenix.

She grew up in Rocklin, where she dated girls as a teen and recalled people telling her to stop when they saw her holding hands in public.

At age 18, she won Miss Rocklin, and at 19 she was crowned Miss Placer County and Miss Teen California.

Her platform is sexual assault awareness, and at the competition Saturday she told a panel of judges her own story of being raped.

She said she was raped on Dec. 23 by a former coworker at an off-campus apartment. She decided not to press charges because she said there were no witnesses and she didn’t want to go through the stress of a case based on his word versus her word. She said she’s been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the assault.

“It’s something that is horrible to go through. Certain things that seem meaningless affect me in ways it never would have before,” she said. “The detective said you can be a victim or a survivor. I think that I’m definitely a survivor.”

During her year as Miss Sonoma County, she hopes to raise awareness of resources for sexual assault survivors, such as Verity, a 24-hour rape crisis center and nonprofit in Santa Rosa that helped her.

She is also critical of Sonoma State, which in January sent a timely notification of an on-campus rape for the first time in two years, although there were 10 reported on-campus rapes in 2017.

“There’s a lot of laws in place to protect students, but there’s not a lot of enforcement,” she said.

Jones draws support from her sorority sisters at Phi Sigma Sigma. She also competes on the Sonoma State equestrian team and serves as secretary of the university’s chapter of College Republicans. But she said she did not vote for President Donald Trump in the 2016 election, instead opting for a third-party candidate. She calls herself a constitutionalist.

“People are apprehensive of me and my views,” she said.

Asked whether she thinks the Trump administration has supported the LGBTQ community, she was undecided.

“It’s been interesting because from what I’ve read there’s been back-and-forth commentary,” she said. “I’m really not sure, to be quite honest.”

Emma Chen, a 14-year-old freshman at Maria Carrillo High School in Santa Rosa, won Outstanding Teen at the competition. Her platform was introducing young girls to careers in STEAM - science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics - and she said she’s looking forward to accompanying Jones at community events.

“I do have a couple of friends who are LGBTQ, and it’s cool they’ll have representation with Miss Sonoma County,” Chen said.

Jones also has the distinction of being the first Miss Sonoma County to not participate in the swimsuit competition, eliminated last June by parent organization Miss America.

“We’re absolutely overjoyed with that change. Miss Sonoma County makes over 150 public appearances. Not one is made in a swimsuit, so it was counterproductive,” Geraldi said.

Gretchen Carlson, Miss America chairwoman and a former Fox News anchor who filed a 2016 sexual harassment lawsuit against the late Fox News CEO Roger Ailes, has rebranded Miss America from a pageant to a competition and called for more inclusivity.

“It’s changed in the way that we want it to change,” said Geraldi, general manager of Sonoma County Airport Express, a sponsor of the competition. “The diversity in our program is something that we’re very proud of and something that we embrace.”

Jones will compete for the title of Miss California in June. She won $3,695 in scholarship funds and sponsored dry cleaning, nails, wardrobe and the cost of competing at the state competition.

You can reach Staff Writer Susan Minichiello at 707-521-5216 or susan.minichiello@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @susanmini.