CUP: Former Miss Sprint Cup Lands New Job

Sprint Cup

CUP: Former Miss Sprint Cup Lands New Job

Former Miss Sprint Cup Paige Duke was dismissed from her job after nude photos of her taken in college surfaced on the Internet...

SceneDaily.com | Posted August 03, 2011 Charlotte, NC

Former Miss Sprint Cup Paige Duke has accepted a job with a Minnesota-based hunting and fishing supply company. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Article by Kris Johnson, SceneDaily.com

It’s been nearly a month since deposed Miss Sprint Cup Paige Duke lost her job as an ambassador for NASCAR’s top series. While Duke has landed on her feet professionally – accepting a job with Minnesota-based hunting and fishing supply company Kruger Farms – she remains conflicted in the wake of the scandal.

Duke was dismissed from her job as Miss Sprint Cup after nude photos of her taken in college surfaced on the Internet.

“I feel like the victim in this case,” Duke said in an interview Monday. “Ultimately, I know I took the pictures and I shouldn’t have ever taken them in the first place, and I did. So I know it’s sort of my fault. [But] it’s hard to accept being fired for something that you didn’t mean to happen.”

Duke said she understood the decision by Sprint to release her due to the morality clause in her contract. “I couldn’t be the face of a Fortune 500 company with these pictures out there. So I understood why they had to let me go,” she said.

But the 24-year-old can’t fully come to terms with how things ended.

“Then I think about it and I’m like, ‘How many people that are probably working for Sprint or in NASCAR just cheat or are unfaithful and do horrible things?’ And here I am, these were pictures I took for my ex-boyfriend,” she said. “And that’s why I could live with myself.

“I know I’m a good person. I know I have a good heart. I have good morals, I do. And I know that was a lapse in judgment then but I can live with myself because I know what kind of person I am. So that’s why it was easier to tell my story.”

Duke is telling her story to anyone who will listen in the hope of helping other girls avoid the type of trouble she experienced. Duke said 95 percent of the response she’s received since her release has been supportive.

“A bunch of people on Twitter started saying, ‘I shared your story with my 13-year-old daughter, or, I sent your story to my daughter in college. Thank you for sharing your story. I know it took a lot of courage. But now I can use your story in hopes that my daughter will learn a lesson from you.’ Michael Waltrip said, ‘I shared your story with [daughter] Macy. Thank you for sharing it with me.’”

Duke continues to work with lawyers on getting her pictures, taken as an 18-year-old undergraduate at Clemson University, removed from websites whenever they surface. But she admits that process has been an uphill battle.

“It’s been hard working with the lawyers,” he said. “Nobody wants to work with me on a contingency basis because there’s not that many laws protecting people. It’s a gamble to go to court. ... You realize you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. Once it’s out on the web, it’s hard to keep fighting it.

“I can’t focus all my energy on that. I can’t worry about it every day and what websites are putting it up.”

In addition to working for Kruger Farms, where she’ll serve as national accounts manager, Duke will keep her primary residence in Lancaster, S.C. and continue to work part-time in a veterinarian’s office there. She will be at select races later this year working as an emcee for Skoal events at the track and be featured as a model in an upcoming Wrangler catalog. Duke is also appearing on Prime Country USA, a Nashville-based radio show.

A lot of doors have opened for Duke, but she is not completely buying into the blessing-in-disguise theory when it comes to the scandal.

“It will never be a blessing with these pictures out there, [and with] what happened to me,” she said. “It’s embarrassing, it hurts, I felt like I was exploited to the whole world, whoever wanted to see these pictures can now see me nude.

“People say publicity is publicity whether it’s good or bad. But who wants to be Googled and the first thing that pops up is Miss Sprint Cup fired for racy photos?

“I’d rather these doors opened up and these jobs came along just because ... not because I was fired as Miss Sprint Cup. So it’s a blessing with what doors have opened now, but I wish they wouldn’t have come this way.”

Duke said she would like to work in NASCAR – “I feel like they’re my family. I miss everyone” – on a full-time basis again in the future. But she has expanded her range of professional views to include possible work in other fields. She said Kruger Farms has plans to utilize her in a hunting and fishing show if a sponsor can be found and the concept can be sold to a TV network. She was scheduled to do some preliminary filming this week in Minnesota.

“I’d love to be some kind of on-air personality, preferably something country (laughs),” she said. “I can’t change my accent. I’ve tried going to the dialect coaches. It doesn’t go away. So I know that would keep me out of a lot of markets. Not everybody wants the Southern accent. But that’s me, that’s who I am.”

Duke said telling her story the past month has served as “therapy” in her personal recovery. She described the week after her dismissal from Sprint in early July as the lowest point in her life, not leaving her house and crying each day until seeking counseling from her preacher in South Carolina.

“I thought the world had ended,” she said. “I wondered where am I ever gonna get another job with these pictures out there. Who is gonna want to hire me? I loved my job. I loved traveling everywhere, meeting all the fans and loved everything about it. And it was just gone – just like that – immediately terminated. I was lost and I felt hopeless.

“Going public with it is probably what helped me the most.”

Despite rebounding professionally, it’s clear that the sting of losing her role as Miss Sprint Cup still persists.

“Losing my job is the worst thing that could have happened to me,” Duke said. “I was hoping to do it for maybe two more years and see what doors opened from that. I’m thankful I had the opportunity and thankful for the people that I met. I’m not bitter about it. I hate that I lost it.”

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