Catching up with the 2000 state Dairy Princess

Nine years, three college degrees and one career change after being the state Dairy Princess, Christina Andrade still looks back on her reign as the time everything began to take shape.

“Being the Dairy Princess, with all of its responsibilities, that was really the start of my adult life,” she said.

Now a third-year pharmacy student, Andrade was a 21-year-old animal science major at Oregon State when the Oregon Dairy Women chose her as their princess. Andrade won as Linn and Benton counties’ representative to the annual contest, and the Democrat-Herald featured her on the People page in January 2000, just after her selection.

The job required her to talk on behalf of the industry at schools and other locations around the state, and it was the chance to improve her public speaking skills that led Andrade to enter the Dairy Princess contest in the first place.

She good-naturedly endured ribbing from friends about her royal station — a favorite line, she said, had to do with getting them coupons for Dairy Queen. And as she traveled Oregon she grew from her various encounters, including those with people opposed to her industry for one reason or another.

Andrade graduated from OSU in 2001 and the same year went to work in Mexico City as programs coordinator for the U.S. Dairy Export Council. Fluent in Spanish, her job was to help American producers “understand and know the Mexican market better.”

She stayed in Mexico until 2003, returning to OSU with a career shift to pharmacy on her mind. While picking up the classes she needed for entry to the College of Pharmacy, she amassed credits for two additional bachelor’s degrees: a B.S. in general science and a B.A. International Degree.

Andrade, who turned 30 in September, is spending this school year at Oregon Health & Science University, which partners with OSU on a program whose students graduate with Pharm.D. degrees — doctor of pharmacy. Students spend their first two years in Corvallis, their third at OHSU in Portland and their fourth doing seven six-week rotations through different work environments.

Andrade, who is single, is unsure where she’ll end up when the time comes to begin her pharmacy career, but she’s deeply interested in what she calls “underserved” populations — immigrants and others prone to slipping through the health care cracks.

She’s already done much work in that area, volunteering as a translator at Albany’s InReach Clinic, which provides $5 doctor visits for the uninsured poor, and spending last summer at the Gallup Indian Medical Center in New Mexico’s Four Corners region.

Presently she volunteers six hours a week at a RiteAid in downtown Portland, where her patients include the homeless.

“Christina is a very good person,” said Doug Stennett, recently retired College of Pharmacy professor. “She’s going to be a super pharmacist.”