MCHS senior Sunny Muscatell wins Miss Sonoma County 2020
By Elena Merino, centerspread editor
Winner of Miss Sonoma County in 2020 and a runner up for Sonoma County’s Outstanding Teen in 2019, Maria Carrillo High School senior Sunny Muscatell continues to shine in the spotlight.
Muscatell first became interested in the scholarship program while watching the Rose Parade, where she saw that year’s Miss Sonoma County and Outstanding Teen. Eventually taking part in the competition and achieving second place in 2019, Muscatell saw no reason to stop her efforts. With her added confidence after having gone through the process before, she decided to try again in 2020, this time winning Miss Sonoma County.
“It was amazing. I immediately started crying. I was so happy!” said Muscatell. Talent being forty percent of each contestants score, winning Best Talent for singing “La Vie En Rose,” gave Muscatell “a good chance at winning the whole thing.” However, listening to announcements of third, second and first runner ups, Muscatell remembered being “worried about” her chances. Her crowning as Miss Sonoma County of 2020 checked off a childhood ambition and satisfied all the “practice pushing [her]self” that led up to it.
Through her title, Muscatell will advocate for increased awareness of eating disorders and health education at middle schools across Sonoma County, hoping to get both students and parents “fighting for it.” She thinks those topics are “not getting the attention [they need],” especially after conducting a student survey at MCHS and finding one-fifth of the respondents reporting a current eating disorder, well above the national average. “The high numbers of people who suffer locally” make Muscatell hope to visit where she went to middle school, Rincon Valley Middle School, first in her campaign. Along with her knowledge that Linn Briner and Joanne Macchia, two teachers at the school, are already “fighting [for] health education back in RVMS”. Through her initiative, she plans to “personally gather comments from students” and present them to the district in tandem with her survey results.
Competing for Miss California in June and taking action to raise eating disorder awareness, Muscatell hopes to make a difference before the end of 2020.