Before the flashing cameras and the bright pageant lights, Ariana Rodriguez was just another kid in the Bluegrass State’s foster care system hoping for a better future.
Miss Kentucky has come a long way since then. But Rodriguez, who’s set to compete for the Miss America crown in early September, wants to make sure other children in state custody can also open the doors she walked through.
“No matter where you’ve come from, no matter how old you are, you can control your future,” she told The Courier Journal in late August ahead of the competition. “Even when people are telling you what that should look like, you’re the only one who ultimately makes those decisions. I really want to get that message across — and not even just the kids in foster care, but to everyone.”
Miss Kentucky Ariana Rodriguez displays the grand champion country ham auctioned at the 61st Annual Kentucky Country Ham Breakfast at the Kentucky State Fair on Thursday, August 21, 2025.
Rodriguez has been all over Kentucky. She estimates she lived in 20 different homes growing up and spent time at a dozen schools across the commonwealth.
It’s a cycle, she said. Her mother was homeless at points during her own younger years and fought drug addiction during Rodriguez’s childhood, though she’s since gotten clean.
Those struggles led Rodriguez, now 20, and her two siblings into foster care at a young age, where they bounced around every corner of the state — “Louisville, Lexington, Nelson County, Meade County, Russell Springs, Adair, Columbia, Taylor, we’ve lived everywhere,” she said, including out of her own car when she was 16.
Pageants were her ticket to a better life. She fell just short of meeting qualifications for college financial aid offered for kids who grew up in the foster care system, but she found the Miss America contest — and the possibility of qualifying for scholarships — as her time in high school was winding down.
But in pageantry, she said, “you have to have a community service initiative.” That was the spark that led her to create The Lucky Ones, a foundation she started in 2023 that aims to help kids in the foster care system.
The foundation has grown into a nonprofit with dozens of volunteers and 13 board members, she said, and it helps kids in any way it can.
Miss Kentucky Ariana Rodriguez sings My Old Kentucky Home at the 61st Annual Kentucky Country Ham Breakfast at the Kentucky State Fair on Thursday, August 21, 2025
Rodriguez hosts The Lucky Ones Podcast, dedicated to “amplifying the voices of foster alumni.” The organization holds The Luckiest Benefit, a formal banquet to support kids in the system, and works to connect foster youth with services such as free driving classes and other life skills so they’re more prepared when they turn 18 and are on their own.
The foundation’s “Suitcase Project” provides suitcases to children in the foster system. Rodriguez was inspired by her own memory of being taken from her grandmother’s home by Child Protective Services.
“We didn’t know that we were going to go in foster care that day, so all we had was the clothes on our back,” she said. “My grandma was able to get a few items of ours that she just happened to have in the car, but she wasn’t allowed to go bring us anything. All we had when we went into foster care was just those few things that were in the car, and we had to put them in a trash bag. It just sets a very dehumanizing tone.”
Through her foundation and her time on the Miss America stage in September, Rodriguez wants to help as many kids as possible who are fighting for a better future. According to state statistics, more than 8,000 children were in foster care in 2023 — the same year Rodriguez graduated high school and enrolled at the University of Kentucky.
She’s an inspiration to adults outside the system, as well. At the Kentucky Farm Bureau Ham Breakfast during the state fair, Agriculture Commissioner Jonathan Shell called her “an incredible young lady, and what a humble person.” Part of her Miss Kentucky role, which she attained in June and will hold for a year, includes serving as the state Department of Agriculture’s spokesperson.
“She truly is the best voice that we could for two loves that I have — agriculture and our foster care system in the state — and for the entire state of Kentucky,” Shell said.
Miss Kentucky Ariana Rodriguez displays the grand champion country ham auctioned at the 61st Annual Kentucky Country Ham Breakfast at the Kentucky State Fair on Thursday, August 21, 2025.
Rodriguez will be in Florida during the first week of September to compete for Miss America. She’s spent the weeks leading up to the competition practicing her singing and choreography while also making sure she’s up to speed on current events for the interview portion.
But the real work, she said, continues when she’s home. Anyone interested in pitching in can find more information on The Lucky Ones’ website: the-lucky-ones.org.
“Kids in foster care are always so focused on surviving that they don’t really get to enjoy the simplicities that many of us do,” Rodriguez said. “We try to give them as much of a normal life as we possibly can by using the community and their resources to support them.”
Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Ariana Rodriguez overcame struggles in foster care to win Miss Kentucky