Stevi Renae Girouard

Age: 18
Hometown: Gonzales, La.
Occupation: Miss Gonzales Jambalaya

Not unlike a lot of teenage girls, Stevi Girouard dreams of one day working at Disney World.

“I love being there and how happy everybody is and how they make you feel at home,” she says.

But first, she’ll work on another of her childhood dreams, which came true in May.

As Miss Gonzales Jambalaya, Girouard will be traveling extensively and giving up a host of weekends to spread the magic of her hometown, where the people are kind and the jambalaya recipes are passed down from grandparents to grandchildren in kitchen after kitchen.

The Southeastern University freshman and East Ascension High School alum admits that she’s only ever made jambalaya from a box.

But she vows, over the next 12 months, to master transforming rice, chicken, green onions, hot sauce, celery, peppers and oil into something exquisite and pure Louisiana.

This is the power of the festival crown.

You meet people you wouldn’t otherwise get to know. You learn more about your hometown, where many older generations are looking to you with eager, sentimental eyes.

Then the real work begins: radiating, through heavenly diamonds, sapphires, satin and sequins, the less-easily expressed, earth-bound beauty of six simple ingredients muddled and heated to glory in a heavy iron pot on a long summer afternoon.

You are yesterday, today and tomorrow.

“I am going to tell them that people who live in Gonzales are very giving, and they care a lot about their festival and city,” she says.

Girouard will tote her crown in a wooden hatbox.

Resourceful, she fashioned some padding to help ease its immense weight.

When asked, at the Miss Gonzales Jambalaya pageant, which Disney character she’d like to become, Girouard didn’t speak of Cinderella, Pocahontas, Mickey Mouse, Goofy or Snow White, though they all have virtues—and plenty of style.

“I said I’d be all of them,” she recounts. “Each character has a different, unique story, and kids can learn a valuable lesson from each.”

In other words, she’ll be herself.