Colleen Benko: Reigning Miss Palisades

Colleen Benko, 16, a sophomore at Marymount entered the annual Palisades Teen Pageant in which contestants are judged on their talent, poise, communication skills and character, with few expectations of winning but by the end of the pageant, Colleen had made it quite apparent to the judges that she would be perfect for the title of Miss Palisades 2007. ‘I didn’t expect to win,’ Colleen says, ‘This sounds so cheesy, but I love the Palisades and I just thought it would be so much fun to do [the pageant].’ Despite having no dancing experience, she confidently took the stage with the other contestants for an opening dance number. ‘I pretend I can dance. I’m really not good though,’ Colleen says, ‘Watching the boys dance kind of makes you feel better about yourself though.’ At one point during the opening routine, Colleen was partnered with Mr. Palisades, Tyler DuBovy who wanted to spice up the dance with a flip. ‘I just wanted to stand in the corner,’ she said, ‘So we went with a spin.’ For the talent portion of the competition, she played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C Minor flawlessly on the piano, something she prefers to do without an audience. ‘My favorite time is when my parents and my sister leave the house and I can bang away on the piano alone,’ Colleen says. Colleen has lived in the Palisades her entire life, moving from one Alphabet Street to another when she was 2. She lives with her parents Sheila and Istvan, and her older sister Ciara, 18, is a student at UC Santa Barbara. So far, as Miss Palisades Colleen has gone to two Chamber of Commerce mixers, as well as the health and tech fairs, and she is really looking forward to riding in the Fourth of July and Holiday parades alongside Mr. Palisades Tyler. Her favorite thing about being Miss Palisades, ‘besides the sash,’ she jokes, has been meeting people. ‘It’s a very good conversation starter. A lot of people come up to you and ask, ‘You’re Miss Palisades aren’t you?’ and you and introduce yourself and get to talk with them,’ she says. Colleen has no shortage of topics to discuss. In addition to being an excellent pianist, she plays on the Marymount tennis team, was recently appointed editor of her school paper, ‘The Anchor,’ next year, and is an honors student, who excels in math. ‘I love math. Math is my passion. I could do math all day,’ Colleen says, adding that she completes a Sudoku puzzle almost every morning. Colleen hopes to attend Stanford after high school, where she wants to major in accounting, engineering, or possibly anything else that involves math. This summer she will get a taste of Stanford when she attends a summer leadership program there in August. However, Colleen has several trips planned before she heads to Stanford. After school lets out this June, she and her family will be vacationing in Hawaii and in July, just after her parade appearance, Colleen is traveling to Spain with her friend, Chloe Chen for a summer study abroad program. She couldn’t be more excited. In the meantime she’ll probably just be hanging out with her friends, anxiously awaiting December, when her first-year driver’s license restrictions are lifted and she can finally drive around with her friends to go to dinner, movies, or simply to each other’s houses for usual weekend sleepovers.