Winning the Miss Louisiana Teen USA pageant opened a lot of doors for 19-year-old Sydney Taylor. But it's safe to say that she never thought she would be using her celebrity voice to talk about a historic pandemic.
It's also safe to say she never thought she herself would get COVID-19. But she did.
So did her boyfriend, Laine Hardy, the 2019 winner of "American Idol." He, too, is 19.
Taylor doesn't know where they got exposed, or even who had it first. "I don't want anyone mad at me. I didn't give it to him!" she said, laughing.
She's using her higher profile as a teen queen to caution other teenagers that they are not safe from this new coronavirus. In the fall she will be a sophomore at Louisiana State University.
"Since the beginning of the virus people have said that it doesn't affect teenagers in the same way that it affects older people or people with underlying illnesses," said Taylor, who lives outside Baton Rouge. "And I think that really got in the teenagers' heads and they're like, 'I'm immune.' Of course they're not immune."
Her message is timely, as health officials across the country tie a growing number of coronavirus outbreaks to teenagers and young adults.
In Taylor's home state of Louisiana, residents 18 to 29 became the fastest-growing age group for positive cases in late June, about the time she got sick.
The state's governor, John Bel Edwards, sounded that alarm on Twitter and a few days ago announced new restrictions because COVID-19 has "spread to every corner" of the state.
In Douglas County, home of the University of Kansas, health officials have linked a recent uptick in cases to bars. County Health Officer Thomas Marcellino said in a statement that rising cases among younger adults "are now being linked to higher-risk older adults in our community. We have to slow down the spread of the coronavirus in Douglas County to prevent a surge of cases."
In Cass County, five cases have been traced to a party over the Fourth of July weekend, but the Kansas City teenager who helped promote it believes more cases will be found among partygoers. He thinks he might be one of them.
Taylor has spoken about her diagnosis to Louisiana media, and Hardy mentioned his diagnosis on Facebook on June 25 in announcing that he was delaying the first two dates of his summer "virtual" tour.
Taylor quarantined in her bedroom, communicating with family members in the same house through FaceTime for nearly two weeks. "I watched so much Netflix," she said.
She feels fortunate that her case was "very mild. I didn't have anything serious," she said. "After that I feel like people should know that we shouldn't be just going out like nothing's going on."
Who wears masks?
In her town of Livingston, Louisiana, "I could probably tell you about 10 to 15 people that I know my age who have tested positive," said Taylor. "I know a ton of people who have gotten it.
"If I'm being honest, I was kinda a little bit less worried about myself. But I was still very worried about getting it because I didn't want to give it to my grandparents who I see all the time. I was still trying to be pretty cautious."
Last week, Gov. Edwards announced a mandatory mask requirement for Louisiana because the state keeps setting record highs for cases reported in a single day.
Taylor said she was already wearing a mask, unlike many of her young friends who have the mindset of "oh it's not going to affect me."
She's not sure she'll be able to change those minds.
"I don't think you can," she said. "Some people are just kinda set in their ways and you just have to say keep your distance. That's the social distancing part. Keep a social distance from those people."
She was a newcomer to the pageant world when she won the title of Miss Louisiana Teen USA last summer. She had just graduated high school, where she played softball and basketball, when a pageant coach reached out to her.
She learned how to be a pageant contestant at the funeral home her pageant coach runs. "I walked up and down the aisles of a funeral home," she said.
After she won, between freshman classes at LSU, appearing in parades and making appearances several times a week with her colleague, Miss Louisiana USA, "I was actually super busy," she said.
And then in mid-March, when Louisiana like the rest of the country went into lockdown, "all of a sudden, it just stopped."
'A little bit of normalcy'
She started feeling sick on a vacation her family took to Pensacola, Florida, in mid-June. Hardy went with them. The group hung out at a condo and on a private beach and largely avoided contact with anyone outside their group, Taylor said.
She and Hardy were the only two who tested positive. "I don't think we got it from Florida. I started feeling bad while I was at the beach, so I probably had to have it already," she said.
"I don't know where I could have gotten it from. I do have to make basic stops, like at the gas station and places like that. So it could have come from somewhere like that."
She felt sick on the first day at the beach.
"I'm always the first one out there and the last one to leave (the beach), but I didn't even want to go down," she said. "My head was hurting, my body kind of ached."
Her mom, a nurse practitioner, told her, "You don't have a fever, you're fine," Taylor said.
"I just wanted to stay in the room and take a nap, and that's not usually how I am. I stayed inside pretty much the whole trip after that because I just didn't feel too good."
By the end of the four-day trip Hardy couldn't taste his food, she said, "and my mom was like, 'Well, that's a symptom.' Then the next day his head started hurting."
Back home in Louisiana, they both tested positive.
The virus held her hostage at home, but then something else happened when she got well.
She started getting the "Oh, you had COVID" comments, from people who seemed worried to be around like her, like she was still contagious.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says someone who "has completed quarantine or has been released from isolation does not pose a risk of infection to other people."
It made her understand why some people wouldn't want to tell anyone they are sick.
"But I think it's your responsibility because you can tell people that you had it so if they've been around you, or been around someone whose been around you, they'll know," she said. "I think we all need to be aware of what's going on, and I feel like a lot of teenagers aren't."
She hasn't resumed pageant appearances yet, but last she heard, the Miss Teen USA pageant, which was postponed in the spring, might be rescheduled for November. So right now she's working on her interview skills and keeping her pageant walk fresh with weekly practices at the funeral home.
She's eager to get back to classes at LSU, which has announced plans to get underway for the fall with a mix of in-person and remote classes and mandatory mask-wearing.
"I feel comfortable with it because I feel like they'll do the social distancing, they'll put the smaller classes in the giant classrooms. I think we'll be OK," Taylor said. "I think people also need a little bit of normalcy back in their lives after everything that's been going on."
Everything, said the teen queen, "just still feels off."
