The doctor is in . . . the pageant

Woman trades title for shot at tiara, promotes organ, tissue donation

By DAN EGAN
degan@journalsentinel.com
Last Updated: June 28, 2003

Madison - Miss America's organizers are correct to insist that their 82-year-old event has evolved into something more than a G-rated girly show, but a lot of people still have a hard time taking seriously a contest that requires a woman to slip into a bathing suit, lipstick and high heels if she wants the chance to preach to the world about the importance of wiping out hunger, or AIDS, or war.

But when the newly crowned Miss Wisconsin, Tina Marie Sauerhammer, takes the stage in Atlantic City this September to lecture about organ and tissue donation, people might want to listen. The Green Bay native knows what she is talking about.

Don't call her Miss Wisconsin. It's Dr. Miss Wisconsin.

The cello-playing "bookworm" (her grandmother's word) whizzed through grade school, skipped high school and flew through eight years of college and medical training.

In May, the 22-year-old was the youngest graduate from the University of Wisconsin Medical School - and possibly its youngest ever.

Few at the medical school knew she had a side career as a pageant queen.

Sauerhammer confessed to feeling skittish last winter when she approached one of her instructors, UW Children's Hospital surgeon in chief Dennis Lund, to see whether it would be OK to take a year off to chase the tiara before beginning her residency in surgery.

"I was a little leery about telling him, but he is my mentor. I had to tell him eventually," she said.

"People think it's a beauty pageant. It's a scholarship program. People make jokes about that, but it is," she said, adding that she has already racked up about $120,000 in student loans. Her Miss Wisconsin victory June 21 wiped away more than $10,000 in debt, and a victory or even a strong showing in Atlantic City likely would bring with it tens of thousands of dollars more.

Lund was taken aback by the request; the Harvard-trained pediatric surgeon had no idea Sauerhammer was young enough to enter a 24-year-old and under contest. He didn't know she had skipped high school.

"That had never come up," he said. "Her level of maturity is such that you never would have guessed that she wasn't just the average medical student."

Lund didn't think twice when asked for advice.

"This would be a wonderful thing for her to do," he said. "She's very smart. Very mature. She has wonderful ideas about what she wants to do and how she can use this as an ambassadorship."

Missed opportunity and tragedy

When Sauerhammer takes the stage to talk about organ donation, she will be speaking from personal experience.

Her father, Randall, died in January 2002, on his 45th birthday, while on the waiting list for a donated kidney. He was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease when Sauerhammer was about 7 years old, and he spent the last four years of his life on the list.

Sauerhammer knows firsthand the pain and frustration that come from organ donor shortages.

She remembers back to 2001, the only other year she entered the Miss Wisconsin contest. Her mother and father traveled to Oshkosh to see her perform. There was a message on the answering machine when her parents returned to Green Bay that night.

Randall's turn for a kidney had come, and gone. Sauerhammer said nobody in her family had any idea he had moved close to the top of the list. Randall wasn't wearing a beeper, and he missed the call.

"That was his only chance," she said.

Sauerhammer has no doubts that her father would be alive today had he been home when the call came in.

She wants that crown.

More than that, more than the money, she wants the microphone. She wants a national stage to share her story. So she is dropping the textbooks and picking up her cello. She is boning up on international news and is practicing her public speaking and hitting the requisite parades and other festivals leading up to the big contest.

"I'm going to work so hard in the next two months," she said.

14-year-old college freshman
There are, of course, distractions along the way. Reporters keep calling.

There aren't a lot of doctors out there born while Ronald Reagan was in office, and it's a good bet none of them is running for Miss America.

Even some of the contest judges seem to get a bit distracted.

Sauerhammer, who qualified for the Miss Wisconsin contest by winning the Miss Madison crown, said a judge in that contest used the interview portion of the event to get some personal medical advice.

She didn't mind that question. There are lots of questions these days.

"People always ask me, 'Are you some kind of genius? Are you a Doogie Howser or something?' " she said, referring to the television show that starred a whiz kid doctor. "My answer is no. I worked very hard to get where I am."

Her grandmother, Esther Sauerhammer, also points to hard work.

"She'd put her mind to something, and she did it," she said.

Sauerhammer put herself on an accelerated pace while in grade school. She studied so hard and tested so well that a dean at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay agreed to let her enroll as a 14-year-old freshman, provided she pass a summer biology class.

She graduated from UWGB with a 3.96 grade point average and spoke at commencement as the winner of the "Outstanding Student Award."

It was a big day for the whole family.

"I come from a very humble background. I think I'm one of the first people in my family to graduate from college," she said.

She said her father excelled in high school but couldn't afford to attend college. He entered the Air Force instead, where he served as a meteorologist in Korea. That is where he met Sauerhammer's mother, Oki. The two returned to Green Bay to raise their only child.

Sauerhammer's father spent his career working in a Green Bay paper mill. Her mother runs a sewing business.

She knew her daughter with the big brown eyes had something special at an early age. The two would watch the Miss America contests together.

"Just think, that could be you someday," her mother would tell her.

Sauerhammer sees the contest as the perfect complement to her professional goal of becoming a pediatric surgeon - something that will take another seven years of training.

"Kids love it," she said of her Miss Wisconsin crown. "You want a doctor that is well rounded. We all have these stereotypes that doctors have no personalities."

And as for the bathing suits? Dr. Sauerhammer's got no problem with that.

"I think it's important to have that bit of tradition and history," she said. "More importantly, it's reflective of a healthy lifestyle, and that should be Miss America, whoever she is

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General Surgery University of Wisconsin Department of Surgery
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