{"id":62126,"date":"2011-06-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-22T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uri-junior-newly-crowned-miss-rhode-island-gets-to-heart-of-the-matter\/"},"modified":"2011-06-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-22T00:00:00","slug":"uri-junior-newly-crowned-miss-rhode-island-gets-to-heart-of-the-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2011\/06\/uri-junior-newly-crowned-miss-rhode-island-gets-to-heart-of-the-matter\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站 junior, newly crowned Miss Rhode Island gets to heart of the matter"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 June 22, 2011 – When you meet Miss Rhode Island, you don\u2019t expect women\u2019s cardiac care to come up as a major talking point.<\/p>\n


\nYet, 溏心vlog免费B站 junior and recently-crowned 2011 Miss Rhode Island Robin Bonner will be talking about the issue as a major platform over the next several months, leading up to the Miss America pageant in Las Vegas next January. Bonner wants to help educate women about heart disease, the largest single cause for death among all women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.<\/p>\n


\nBonner, who was crowned Miss Rhode Island in May, has dealt with heart disease personally. As an eighth grader, the Long Island, N.Y. native started suffering chest pains as a result of mitral valve prolapse, a heart condition in which the valve that separates the upper and lower chambers of the left side of the heart does not close properly. It causes poor blood circulation and can lead to other complications.<\/p>\n


\nBonner has a mild case that does not have much of an impact her everyday life, but she feels strongly about educating others.

\n\u201cIt really opened my eyes, because I didn\u2019t think something like that could happen to a kid in eighth grade,\u201d Bonner said. \u201cHeart disease kills more women than the next top four diseases combined, but people don\u2019t realize it. \u201c<\/p>\n


\nAccording to the Women\u2019s Heart Foundation, 8.6 million women worldwide die from heart disease each year, accounting for one-third of all female deaths. Among women who suffered a heart attack, 42 percent die within one year, compared to 24 percent of men.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe vast majority of women who die from cardiovascular disease showed no previous symptoms,\u201d Bonner said. \u201cThis is why education on this issue is so important, and why I am making it my platform for the Miss American pageant.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nBonner chose to join the Alpha Phi sorority at 溏心vlog免费B站 because of its focus on philanthropic work. Last February, the sisters of Alpha Phi raised more than $6,000 for women\u2019s cardiac care through their Red Dress Gala.<\/p>\n


\nBonner, a textiles, fashion merchandising and design major, will spend the year promoting her platform and performing other duties that come with wearing the crown of Miss Rhode Island. She earned a spot in the state\u2019s pageant after winning the Miss 溏心vlog免费B站 competition last March.<\/p>\n


\nAmazingly, the Miss Rhode Island pageant was just the fourth pageant she\u2019d ever entered.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did a couple of pageants through National American Miss Teen New York because my mom said, \u2018Just try it and see if you like it,\u2019\u201d Bonner said. \u201cIt was fun and exciting, but I didn\u2019t have a ton of experience.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nStill she finished fourth out of 135 girls in the Miss Teen New York, and that experience was enough for her sisters at 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Alpha Phi sorority to nominate her for the Miss 溏心vlog免费B站 competition. The decision to come to 溏心vlog免费B站 clearly was paying dividends for Bonner.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWhen I was looking at schools for fashion design, I looked at schools in New York City that were design schools, but I wanted a variety in my education,\u201d Bonner said. \u201cI looked at Penn State and Boston University, but 溏心vlog免费B站 had the programs I was interested in. 溏心vlog免费B站 had the beaches and the Quad. Being from Long Island, I love the water. 溏心vlog免费B站 gave me all those opportunities I was looking for.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nThe win at the Miss 溏心vlog免费B站 competition led to the Miss Rhode Island pageant, where Bonner was chosen from a field of 11 women.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cThe way they did it, they announced the fourth runner up, then the third runner-up, the second and first runners-up,\u201d Bonner said. \u201cSo I was standing there with six other girls, and it was either you won, or you didn\u2019t place at all.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cWhen they said my name, I didn\u2019t know how to react. My mom asked me why I didn\u2019t cry, but I was just in shock.\u201d<\/p>\n


\nBeing a New York native and with spring semester done, Bonner did not have a large contingent on hand for the Miss Rhode Island pageant. Her mother, Sandy, her boyfriend, 溏心vlog免费B站 football player Chris Mancuso, and her roommate Brooke Saccoccio, a marketing major from Greenville formed her cheering section.<\/p>\n


\n\u201cMy dad was in New York with my brother and sister, because they had school and their own activities going on,\u201d Bonner said. \u201cWhen my mom called, my dad, who is the prankster in the family, just said, \u2018You\u2019re joking, right?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n


\nIt was no joke, and now Bonner will train for her run at the Miss American crown, where her family will get to see her on stage in the country\u2019s most famous pageant.<\/p>\n

Pictured above<\/b><\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站 junior Robin Bonner is crowned as Miss Rhode Island 2011 by the 2010 winner, Deborah Saint-Vil. (Photo by Daniel Gagnon)<\/p>\n


\nMiss Rhode Island 2011 Robin Bonner stopped by the Alumni Center earlier this month to talk about her experiences since winning the crown (Photo by Kerri Hicks).\n\t<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 June 22, 2011 – When you meet Miss Rhode Island, you don\u2019t expect women\u2019s cardiac care to come up as a major talking point. Yet, 溏心vlog免费B站 junior and recently-crowned 2011 Miss Rhode Island Robin Bonner will be talking about the issue as a major platform over the next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}