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Firefighters, Beauty Queens Give Sick Kids Royal Treatment

Tribune photo by CHRIS URSO

Miss Pasco County Fair Lisa Noury helps Savannah Allison, 3, put on makeup at St. Joseph's Children Hospital in Tampa.

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By KEITH MORELLI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 20, 2008

TAMPA - Almost a dozen beauty queens, dazzling in their stylish dresses and impeccable makeup, plunked themselves down across from sick little girls at St. Joseph's Children's Hospital this morning. The queens painstakingly painted nails and applied blush to the girls' faces.

Outside, Tampa Fire Rescue firefighters hoisted hospitalized little boys up onto the gleaming red truck. Some yanked at the steering wheel while others, in hospital pajamas and plastic firefighter helmets, climbed on the back. Some were still attached to IVs dragged around behind them.

Two to three times a year, hospital administrators schedule a kids day like this.

"It's my job to make sure the kids are doing well," said Lisa Andrew, the hospital's child-life specialist, who coordinated the day.

And this day was a crowning achievement.

Little girls, some not so sick, others very sick, got the full queen treatment. "It is queen for a day [for the girls]," she said, "and hero for a day [for the boys]."

Between 25 and 35 children were sprung from their rooms to come down to the lobby and take part in the party. They made arts and crafts and buddied up with blue-shirted firefighters and paramedics.

Two-year-old Austin Justice just couldn't get enough of the fire truck. He falls into the "not very sick" category, having just had his tonsils out. He was scheduled to go home today, but timing was everything. He beamed as he sat behind the steering wheel of the truck.

"He loves fire trucks," said his mom, Micheal, of Tampa. "He loves to drive, too."

Leah Campanella runs the Tampa chapter of Queen for a Day, a nonprofit national organization. She said such events, where beauty queens are called into service, happen several times a year. Pageant queens are here from as far away as Lakeland, Pasco County and Clearwater.

"We're here to pamper the kids," she said.

At one table, 3-year-old Savannah Allison, bald from treatment for an undisclosed disease, had a serious look. She let Miss Pasco County Fair Lisa Noury paint on nail polish and brush on some blush, but the little girl wanted to dab on her own lipstick.

Noury, 19, said she has done about four such events during her tenure. She could only grin at her young charge, as she pursed her lips and looked into a mirror. "She's having a ball with that lipstick."

Reporter Keith Morelli can be reached at (813) 259-7760 or kmorelli@tampatrib.com.

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