Tiaras stolen from beauty queen who lost crown

The house on Colepark Drive that Rebekah Revels Lowry and her husband moved into three weeks ago was broken into on Tuesday. Lowry discovered the burglary when she returned home from her teaching job in Clinton.

"I noticed that everything was kind of disheveled. The television was gone. The Bose radio system was gone. Lots of DVDs and other things were just out of place," she said Thursday.

Lowry called the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office to report the crime, but it wasn't until the next morning that she realized the burglars had taken something else.

"Something just inside of me said, 'Where are my crowns?' I had them out in my new home. I wanted to display them, show them off," she said.

She said she was devastated when she found that both her Miss North Carolina crown and her Miss Fayetteville crown were missing.

"My reign, as most people know, as Miss North Carolina was not the picture-perfect reign. It wasn't straight and narrow. It was up and down, all over the place. It was a wonderful reign, but the crown is really the only symbol I had left."

The Robeson County native was crowned Miss North Carolina in 2002, but the state pageant stripped her of the honor after her ex-boyfriend said he planned to sell nude photos of her taken in college.

A protracted court battle ensued over the title Miss North Carolina, and another woman represented North Carolina in the Miss America pageant that fall.

"It's just ironic with me and the crown," Lowry said.

Since she resigned as Miss North Carolina during the scandal, she said she can't go to pageant officials and ask for a new one.

"It took something away from me that I worked really hard for, and that's the only thing I had left aside from memories. Now, it's gone."

If nearby residents saw anything suspicious between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. Tuesday, they are asked to call the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office.