
Two years after being crowned the first Arab-American Miss USA, 26-year-old Rima Fakih has been sentenced to 20 hours of community service, six months’ probation, and $600 in fines for drunk driving. She was able to get out of jail time by pleading no contest to driving while under the influence in the suburbs of Detroit back in December. That night, she was driving 60 mph in a 30 mph zone, and swerving through traffic, before being pulled over in Highland Park. Officers found an opened Champagne bottle inside of her 2011 Jaguar. The former Miss Michigan claimed on the night of her arrest that she hadn’t been drinking. But breathalyzer tests put her blood alcohol level at 0.19—more than double the legal limit. Her lawyer, W. Otis Culpepper, accurately predicted her probation sentence, which she’ll be permitted to serve in California while looking for jobs in the entertainment industry. He says that Fakih will then “get back to California and get on with being a Hollywood kind of person”.