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Photography by Jeff Scheid. CHERA KIMIKO TV ANCHOR/REPORTER KRISTY SKUPA DEPUTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY COLE ST. CLAIR BARTENDER RUTA JASIUKAITIS DANCER/MODEL STEPHANIE WILSON PUBLICIST BLAIR FARRINGTON STAGE SHOW CREATOR MYA COLLINS XFL CHEERLEADER TISHARA COUSINO MODEL/PLAYMATE SUSAN ANTON ENTERTAINER DARIO HERRERA CLARK COUNTY COMMISSION CHAIRMAN

Sunday, January 14, 2001
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

LOOKING GOOD: Beautiful People of Las Vegas

Top 10 winners include broadcaster, attorney, bartender and county commissioner

We set out recently to find the 10 most beautiful people of Las Vegas. Reporters and editors voted for these 10 adults after an arduous, but necessarily limited, search in a valley of 1.4 million people.

Since beauty is subjective, we used no criteria for judging, except nominees must have Las Vegas residency. So, for instance, an early favorite, actress Charisma Carpenter of the TV show "Angel," was disqualified because she doesn't live here anymore.

You're probably wondering if the beautiful people seemed nice during the interview process, and whether they looked beautiful in person. The answer to both questions is yes, and that goes for all 10 of them. Some look more stunning in the flesh.

Each person seemed to have natural beauty. Several winners said they called their parents to thank them after hearing they made this list, because you can pick your jeans, but you can't pick your genes. We'll start with the overall winner. The rest are listed alphabetically.

Chera Kimiko, 29, is an anchor and reporter at KVBC-TV, Channel 3. She received the most votes.

Kimiko was born in Jacksonville, Fla., and raised in Denver. She studied the sociology fields of criminology and forensics at Colorado State University, and she studied sociology and journalism at Richmond College in Kensington, England. She worked for TV stations in Denver; Yuma, Ariz.; Phoenix; and Santa Maria, Calif., before she moved to Las Vegas in 1999.

Kimiko, who's half-Japanese, is the granddaughter of one of thousands of people who were sent to internment camps in Utah during World War II. That background may have affected her as a journalist. She most values news that can promote a "positive outcome."

"Where you touch someone's life. Like, `I feel so much better about myself,' or `I would like to go help someone now,' " she says.

Susan Anton, 50, is a singer and actress. She was born and raised in Oak Glen, Calif., and was Miss California 1969.

Anton and her actor/director husband Jeff Lester, who oversees Big Picture Studios here, moved to Las Vegas six years ago. She was a frequent headliner in "The Great Radio City Spectacular" at the Flamingo, which closed last summer. She also toured nationally with the Rockettes. Anton and Lester, who are both golf buffs, now divide their time between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Anton has a concert CD set for release this spring. She has moved away from singing traditional Vegas set lists and now covers rock and R&B songs by such artists as the Allman Brothers and the Beatles.

"It's fun to be able to sing some of the music I was raised on in the '60s and '70s," she says.

Mya Collins, 18, is a cheerleader for the XFL football team, the Las Vegas Outlaws. She was born in Rimini, Italy, but her family moved around Europe and to San Diego before settling in Las Vegas in the 1980s.

She's a marketing major at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Collins wants to own her own business someday. She ran her first business in the third grade. She took pictures of classmates, made photocopies, laminated the photocopied faces and made safety-pin earrings out of them. She sold them for 50 cents. She paid for the overhead with a $25 loan from her mom, which she paid back with interest.

She's so determined, she seems to be only half-joking when she says she hopes to buy an island for herself and her family.

"I'm always dreaming. I want to do everything. That includes skydiving, bungee jumping, everything," she says.

Tishara Cousino, 22, is a model who was Playboy's Playmate in May 1999. Later this month, she debuts her own Web site, www.clubtishara.com, where she will display model parties and auction such things as a Harley Davidson and a date with herself. She was born and raised in Las Vegas.

"I have roots here. I'm very attached," she says. "I always meet people (who just moved here), and I always say, `You have to give it a year and a half.' If you move to any city, you have to give it time."

Cousino says that despite her model life, she's a normal woman, not a club girl or a party animal.

"I really stay close to home. I don't really maintain much of a big social life, except for close friends."

Blair Farrington, 44, has access to gladiators, camels and pyrotechnics. He owns Farrington Productions. He develops "high quality" and "cutting-edge" stage projects in Atlantic City, New Orleans and Las Vegas, such as the "Masquerade Show in the Sky" at the Rio, he says.

Farrington helped bring De La Guarda and "Copacabana" to the Rio. Farrington Productions' sister company, Imagination Costumes, designed costumes for Disney's California Adventure theme park, which opens this year.

Farrington was born in New York to opera singers, modeled at age 3, and became a successful dancer, until he blew out a knee while portraying James Bond at the 1982 Oscars. He had moved to Las Vegas in 1975. After the injury, he started anew.

"In a way, it's a good thing I totaled my knee, or I never would have focused. I'd be another starving actor waiting in line for a job."

Dario Herrera, 27, is the new chairman of the Clark County Commission. He was born and raised in Miami. He moved here in 1991 to work on his political science degree at UNLV. He graduated summa cum laude, the highest graduation honor.

In a political poll of his, 70 percent of women supporters said they once voted for Herrera either because he was good looking or because they had met him, he says. He likes Las Vegas even more than his hometown.

"Where else would a relative newcomer have been elected to the state assembly and (then) the county commission in his 20s? I couldn't do this in Florida. I'd have to be 80 years old" to do that.

Ruta Jasiukaitis, 23, is a dancer and a model. She portrays a fading queen and a big frog in the stage production "Mystere."

Jasiukaitis' parents moved from Lithuania to America during World War II. Jasiukaitis was born and raised in Las Vegas, although she went to a boarding high school for the arts in Interlochen, Mich.

She started modeling when she was 13. As an adult, she briefly modeled in New York, but returned to Las Vegas. Las Vegas will always be home, she says, but she wants more fine arts and other improvements in the city.

"If I want to raise a family, I don't know if I would stay," she says. "The quality of life needs to change."

Cole St. Clair, 31, is a bartender for the VIP section of Studio 54, which he calls "the busiest corner in town."

He was born in St. Louis and raised there and in San Diego. He moved here five years ago to study communications at UNLV. He is prepping for a career in broadcasting, although he says he still enjoys making good money and working with an "awesome cross section of people" at Studio 54, where he has served beer to Tiger Woods and Pierce Brosnan, among others.

"You may work at a neighborhood bar in San Diego, and people have a few beers and go home. Here, people party. The hard part is to throw a party every day, but it's cool."

Kristy Skupa, 29, could theoretically put the other beautiful people in jail. She's a deputy district attorney for Clark County. She was born and raised in Las Vegas, although she left to go to Loyola University in Chicago, and then Chicago-Kent College of Law. Law's in her blood. Her dad's a lawyer.

The officer of the court has faith in people.

"Some of the most moral people I've met, and some of my most loyal friends, are people I've met here in Vegas. I think it gets a bad rap," she says. "If you're from here, it's a small town, still. It's a big city with a small-town feel, and it's nice."

Stephanie Wilson, 27, is an account manager at the public relations firm, Kirvin Communications Group. A Colorado State University graduate, she moved to Las Vegas two years ago. As a publicist, she promotes such clients as Wolfgang Puck's Spago and the Sahara's "The Rat Pack Is Back" show.

Wilson was born in Grand Junction, Colo., and raised atop a cold and snowy mountain in Evergreen, Colo.

She doesn't feel comfortable as a subject of this story, because it's usually her job to work in the shadows of her clients.

"P.R. is about getting other people in the spotlight," she says.