By Thomas Cathey | OBSERVER correspondent
While winning pageants and donning a sash and crown may come with much pride and popularity, for some pageant queens, these titles come with the responsibility of helping others. Enter Carmichael’s Shlanda Breeden, who won the Mrs. and Ms. California HeartShine titles last year.
“What HeartShine is about is inner beauty, because most of the pageants require you to have a certain look, a certain height or be a size 2,” Breeden explained. “With HeartShine it doesn’t matter how you look. The only thing that matters is that you have a good heart, you love community service and that you’re passionate about what you’re doing.”
Breeden had no previous pageant experience. But a friend of hers – 2022’s Ms. Black USA, Jessica McCall – convinced her to do it for the benefit of her business and animal advocacy, and became her mentor.
“I was a pageant coach for the Purple Pageant and she had come as one of the contestants. It was her first time in pageantry and I was actually training her,” McCall remembered. “I saw that she was a great public speaker and I was like, ‘Wow, you have this naturally!’ So we became really close friends from then on and I trained her for the Mrs. California HeartShine pageant.”
Breeden went on to win that pageant and won again later in the year, this time in the “Ms.” category. She now plans to represent California in HeartShine’s national pageant in
November. As hoped, her success with HeartShine and pageantry has elevated her business and initiated her animal advocacy platform with Miranda’s People, Canine for Cancer.
The Carmichael resident’s inspiration to really take action for animal advocacy came from her late mastiff Dutch, who passed away from skin cancer years ago. While trying to get proper care for Dutch during his battle with cancer, she discovered that there are easier, more affordable ways to take care of an ill pet and that pet owners should know about these methods to prevent their pets from getting unnecessarily euthanized.
“Most people, when they find out their dogs have a major illness, dog or cat, the first they think of is, ‘Oh, I’m gonna have to put them down because I can’t afford it’. Well, that wasn’t an option for me,” Breeden said.
Even before partnering with Miranda’s People – a nonprofit designed to help owners and their dogs with cancer – to start the Canine for Cancer initiative, Breeden did all she could to get out word about these methods. But her partnership with the organization provided a significant boost for her advocacy, as they’d provide Breeden with informational pamphlets so she could pass them out at all of her events.
“Every titleholder in HeartShine, especially over the age of 16, we encourage them to get a platform,” said HeartShine co-director Danna Mack Barnes. “Some of them have passions and platforms they already come to us with, and that was Shlanda’s case. She had already known that she wanted to make a difference helping people with this reduced cost of medication that animals need. So that’s her passion and she’s relentless with pressing that mission forward.”
Breeden also runs Kit Kat Poochie Parties, a pet party business she started in 2010. It started to pick up steam and even gained local media attention. Breeden became well known for her unique and creative food dishes she provided for pets at these parties, including pet-friendly pizza, ice cream and candy apples. She makes personalized keepsakes for pet owners as well, and even designed one for culinary personality Tabitha Brown, which Brown featured on her Facebook show.
“When you have a sash and crown, people do pay attention and they look at you, because they look at you like Miss USA,” Breeden said. “It’s easier for me to approach them with the sash and crown versus not having one. Because when I was doing it through my pet party business, people were like, ‘Yeah, OK, whatever.’ With the sash and crown it’s totally different. People actually do listen. That’s how I get the word out and use my title.”