Miss Millennium’s Destiny

On the afternoon of Dec. 13, film editor Dede Allen stood at the podium in the New York Hilton’s Grand Ballroom and accepted the New York Women in Television and Film’s Muse award. Ms. Allen had begun her career as a messenger for Columbia Pictures but had gone on to edit such films as Dog Day Afternoon and Reds, breaking Hollywood gender barriers along the way.

As Ms. Allen thanked the crowd for her honor, another show-business hopeful was looking for purchase at a press table near the back of the ballroom. Miss Millennium Heather Schmid had ignored her lunch to give a breathless multimedia presentation about her past 24 hours in New York.

"We went to six events last night," the blond 22-year-old said earnestly to the bleary-eyed reporters who sat on either side of her. She was trussed up in a white silk Bebe blouse with corset strings in front and back. Her slim, black pinstriped pants bore the same label. Her newly manicured nails were painted in an eye-blinding color that she called "orangey pink."

Ms. Schmid hails from Marlborough, Conn., and received an undergraduate degree in vocal performance from Boston University in 1999. She trained as a classical opera singer and in July of 2001 was selected as Miss Millennium by a private company called Millennium Productions. The ceremony was held in Edmonton, Alberta, in the largest mall in Canada. Now her Miss Millennium business card reads "Pop Diva."

Ms. Schmid spends most of her time performing regularly at the MGM Grand and Venetian hotels in Las Vegas and on a nationwide mall tour. She plays occasional Manhattan dates at the Mercury Lounge. At one of these mid-December gigs, she was "discovered" by Aubrey Reuben, who spent 30 years as an assistant principal in the public schools before becoming a freelance photographer, frequently for the New York Post. Mr. Reuben, who has long functioned as a kind of W.R. Wilkinson for clueless starlets, has been squiring Ms. Millennium through the social morass and photographing her encounters.

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