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Former soldier uses pageant fame to help veterans

Raquel Riley Thomas was an ROTC cadet at Hampton University in Virginia when she took part in her first beauty pageant.

She won Miss Congeniality at that event and never looked back, later embarking on a nine-year career as an Army ordnance officer.

Now she’s winning top pageant prizes in order to serve as a role model for her young daughters and raise awareness for veterans employment issues.

Riley Thomas is the current Mrs. Maryland America and won runner-up in the 2010 Mrs. America Pageant in September.

Mrs. America contestants from the 50 states and District of Columbia are 51 of “the most accomplished married women of America,” according to the Mrs. America organization.

A spokesmodel and fashion blogger who left the Army in 2002, Riley Thomas works as a marketing consultant for the Veterans Affairs Department in Washington. She’s married to a West Point grad and fellow former ordnance officer, with whom she has two daughters.

Riley Thomas believes her pageant platform, “Veterans Employment: Taking Care of Our Heroes and their Families,” helped sway the judges at the national competition, and she plans to carry that message throughout her term as Mrs. Maryland.

— Amanda Miller