I Odi Ann Paterson still has the strip of paper she pulled from a fortune cookie back in December, when she was having lunch with her mother at a Chinese restaurant in Oregon. Always a bit superstitious, she was taken aback when she found not the usual vague bromide but a specific prediction: "You will be singled out for a promotion."
"I couldn't believe it," she says, holding the fortune as she emerges from the bedroom of her West Hollywood apartment. "My mom told me not to take it seriously, but I saved it anyway." Jodi Ann Paterson got her promotion: Miss October 1999 became Playmate of the Year 2000. At the dawn of a new millennium, Playboy has a new ambassador--a young woman born in Balikpapan, Indonesia to an American father and an Indonesian mother. She was raised in the hippieish environs of Eugene, Oregon and never thought she'd make it onto these pages.
"I'm not the typical Playboy type," says Jodi Ann, curling up on her couch in sweatpants, a tank top and her fluffy bunny-eared slippers. "Even after I was chosen to be Miss October, I never thought I would have a chance of becoming the Playmate of the Year. When you think of Playboy, you think of beautiful girls with blonde hair and big boobs--that has been the Playboy type since 1953. There were girls last year who fit that ideal, but I was almost the opposite."
But our readers knew that beauty comes in many forms when they helped choose Jodi Ann out of 1999's Playmate lineup. "Last year was the year of the rabbit," she says. "But this is the year of the dragon, and the dragon represents all things Asian. I was born in Indonesia, and I'm half Asian, so it makes sense that this would be my year."
And anyone who knows Jodi Ann knows she will make the most of her year. This is a woman who took college classes while still in high school; on the side and for the challenge, she entered and won the Miss Oregon Teen USA pageant. In college, she joined the debate team, wrote for the school newspaper and worked at the campus television station. Since her Playmate pictorial appeared last fall, Jodi Ann has been taking acting lessons, serving as a spokesperson and host, and meeting and hanging out with successful people. And while she's eager to learn as much as possible, "you have to be careful in this town," she says. "It's full of name-droppers and phonies. But it's also a fascinating place for people watching, and I think I'm good at figuring out what people are all about."
She's also determined not to succumb to the temptations of her new environment. "I've told my family and my friends in Oregon, 'If I start to change, you have to let me know.' And I know my mom will bust me on it if I start to get away from how I was raised."
Still, Jodi Ann is enjoying all that Los Angeles has to offer. "I'm at the Mansion four or five times a week, watching movies or working out in the gym," she says. "Hef has the greatest parties in town, and one of the nice things about being a Playmate is that we can get into just about any place in town.
"I loved my life in Oregon," she says, "but in a way it was very predictable. I knew that if I stayed at the television station, in five years I'd be an anchor. Then I'd get married and have a couple of kids." She shakes her head, thinking of the path she has taken instead. "But now things aren't predictable at all. That's what I love most about my life here: I have no idea what kinds of opportunities are going to come my way in the next year."
