Miss Wellington USA Brie Baldrica Puts Her Focus On Fighting The Scourge Of Bullying Story by Alexandra Antonopoulos Photos by Houston Costa
Brie Baldrica, the 22-year-old winner of this year’s Miss Wellington USA pageant, is using her title to shed light on a cause very close to her heart. Baldrica’s pageant platform is focused on bullying, and she wants people to understand just how big of an issue bullying is, particularly for children in school. Baldrica herself is no stranger to bullying. In fact, the reigning Miss Wellington USA endured years of ridicule and ostracism by classmates in middle school. “When I was in eighth grade, I was severely bullied by girls who started rumors about me,” Baldrica recalled. “I would go home crying every day. I started going to school wearing a lot of black hoodies and sweatshirts and eyeliner. I became a totally different person. I was eating lunch in the bathroom and the library. I even stopped eating at one point. I was at my wits’ end.” As the bullying continued, feeling that she had nowhere to turn, Baldrica even considered suicide to escape the daily torment and loneliness. She knew it was time for a change when her younger sister uttered words that broke her heart. “When [my sister] was six she said, ‘Brie-Brie, who are you? I don’t know you anymore.’ She didn’t know what was going on, but I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t happy or laughing, I would just go to my room,” Baldrica said. “That changed me. At 13, it was really hard to do, but my love for my sister and wanting to be there for her was really the reason that I turned
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around so fast. I wanted to be the best role model and mentor she could possibly have.” Embracing change and focusing on the positive, Baldrica enrolled in a homeschool program and sped past her peers academically. She was simultaneously enrolled in community college courses and excelled in this new environment, graduating high school at age 16. “It has always been my dream to be an actress. I wanted to pursue my career,” Baldrica said, which is exactly what she did next. Right out of the gate, Baldrica booked several guest-starring roles and landed her first lead in a movie, Forget Me Not, when she was 17. “I just kind of changed my life around,” she said. Baldrica attended Pepperdine University in California, but was nervous to reenter academia given her torturous social experiences in middle school. “After being bullied, I was really leery of women,” Baldrica said. She was hesitant to join a sorority, but decided it was the right move after
meeting a few of her soon-to-be sisters, who had been part of an anti-bullying movement known as the Kind Campaign. “It’s a nationwide campaign, and it’s against girl-on-girl crimes,” Baldrica explained. After becoming involved with the sorority, she started working with the SMART Girls Program at the Boys & Girls Club of Malibu, implementing much of what she was learning from the Kind Campaign in the programming there. “We would talk about self-esteem issues and boys, but the main focus was on bullying,” she said. “I absolutely loved it. It’s something that I want to bring to Wellington.” While in college, Baldrica, who majored in psychology, competed in the Miss California pageant twice, placing first runner-up and second runner-up in the two years she competed. Family and career brought her back to Wellington, where she earned her most recent title. As Miss Wellington USA, Baldrica is spreading her anti-bullying message and preparing to compete for the title of Miss Florida USA. She hopes that her pageant role will give her