Carmen María Montiel - Stolen Identity

However, that morning when she got to work, there was a notice of an incident on an airplane earlier that day, the plane that had arrived at around 4 a.m. Miss Congeniality is happy. Finally, something to do. She was hoping it was something good. Could have not been anything major since she was not called when it happened. That was the only requirement of her job that made her feel like she was a marshall: she could be called at all times.

She read the report about a domestic disturbance on a flight from Houston to Bogota, Colombia. The plane returned to Houston. It did not make sense!!! The woman was with her husband and her 14-year-old daughter. No charges were filed. The pilot did not want to file charges. The police listed public intoxication. But both she and her husband had been drinking on the plane. And the flight attendants have a responsibility not to serve alcohol to passengers to the point of intoxication. Was she really drunk?

The woman arrested in this incident was only 115 pounds. What was she really arrested for? But then she thinks if only she could have kept her weight down like that. She remembered when she was that skinny, tall, blond and beautiful.

She checked her belly and her dark cheap suit. The only thing that resembled something from her past was the hair… a little!

She decided to Google this woman.

WOW!!! She was a walking Wikipedia. She saw that Carmen was her age and had pages and pages of achievements and awards. She was Miss Venezuela, Miss South America and second runner- up in the Miss Universe pageant for 1984. She is a journalist with a successful broadcasting career. And she still looks beautiful. She has kept herself well and is active in numerous charitable organizations in Houston. Recognized in Houston and abroad for her work and dedication, she is a woman who had earned respect and love. But now this?

She is a public figure that people still follow as if it were yesterday when she won the crown. She has Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts all open for her many fans. From the comments, it sounds like people still love her, even though she was a beauty queen nearly 30 years ago.

Her social media posts are full of recent pictures of herself and with her family. She still looks stunning! How has she done it? Miss Congeniality thinks to herself: “Everybody has a dark side. I will find this woman’s dark side… or this is it? Is she Miss Little Goody Two Shoes?”

She started her investigation. She searched and searched, finally finding that this woman was arrested for DWI in Colorado. Bingo! However, none of this was public. She still enjoyed popularity and love from her fans. No one knew about it. But what if this got out? Little Miss Perfect and Beautiful is not that perfect after all!

She was jealous! She kept thinking, “What if I not only was the queen in my high school, but went beyond and became like her, Miss USA! My life would have been different, like hers. Not like this. Not these ugly four walls. Not this boring job. Not this ugly dark suit. I could be a real FBI agent, out fighting terrorists.”

But Miss Congeniality was never at the top of her class and not smart enough for that type of position.

“But this woman was Miss Venezuela and a journalist. And now she flies first class while I am here in this hole.”

She bet there was more and she was going to find it.

She later learned that the night of the incident, weather was the reason the plane returned. But the truth was not going to stop Miss Congeniality from making a case out of this. After all, she had nothing else to do.

She launched her investigation, calling Colorado and speaking with everybody she could there. Then she talked with Carmen’s husband, who was surprisingly cooperative… Why?

He actually was very interested in helping her. He said Carmen had been a problem always and told her things that could not be found anywhere else. They could be true or lies, she thought, but who knew her better than the person who had spent 28 years with her. As he said, she had been with him longer than with her own parents. She assumed he knew more than anybody else, but it never crossed her mind why. What was his motive? As a husband, was not he supposed to protect her? Did she check with Harris County for divorces filed and other reports that stay in the system even if nothing happened after all?

This will show how ineffective the FBI is. A husband trying to get rid of his wife successfully uses the system, and the innocent woman ends up facing criminal charges, while terrorists like the Tsarnaev brothers and Omar Marteen, responsible for the Boston bombing and the Orlando massacre, respectively, fall through the cracks of the FBI and end up killing many innocent people. But she could not think about why that man wanted to hurt a woman who had loved him for 30 years and was the mother of his three children. Really, she did not care. After all, it served her purpose.

She further investigated social media posts, for lack of anything else to do. She went back to comments and tweets made, and bingo! She got something she repeated on Facebook and Twitter: “President Obama is the American Chávez.” She hated Obama. Then she sees social media comments against Hillary. It was obvious this woman was conservative and a Republican. If this woman ended up in prison, it could mean a great advantage to Miss Congeniality’s career whether or not Carmen was guilty. It did not matter what really happened on that plane. This would at least lead to a photo opportunity in People magazine since she is a beauty queen from the country with the most crowns in the world.

After all, it is almost impossible to win over the US government once you face federal charges. Less than 2% of people charged by the government wins.

In less than two months, I got my daughter back. But she was destroyed!

My oldest daughter was always a challenge to raise. She is hard headed and a negotiator. “No” never meant “no” to her. It meant there was room to negotiate her way into anything. I called her my 70-year-old daughter. She was like an old lady, very entertaining to talk to. And she has an insight into things that only mature people have. However, she inherited her father’s compulsive and experimental personality. At the time I did not even know my husband had an addictive personality. I just thought he was compulsive.

The divorce was very hard for her. She adored her father, so much so that when she turned six years of age, she asked me to have a wedding with her dad as the setting for her birthday party. Venezuelans like parties big and orchestrated, especially parties for the children. We have themes for our parties and go all the way with decorations, tablecloths, piñatas, party favors, the cake, entertaining, etc. So, this special birthday party was like a mini wedding; even my friends cried like a real wedding. It was hilarious, fun and beautiful.

But now, for her to see and understand the person her father had become was difficult. She could not understand that he had changed or she could not accept it. She was hoping for him to be who he once was. Even for me, it was hard to see who he had become. I definitely did not fall in love with this person.

She went through periods when she was mad at him and would not talk to him. Then she would tell him off and describe what she did not like about the situation. But she loved him so much. And his personality changes made her feel like he did not love her. She was just a teenager dealing with too much… not understanding and thinking “ No me ama, Mami! ” (“He does not love me, Mom.”)

After two months of not talking with her dad, she decided to see him, because she needed money or maybe it was simpler than that: she missed him. She took her brother and sister to dinner with him, but she came back changed. Every time he saw the children, they came back mad.