The new Miss America is a former tomboy who played college volleyball, a Rhodes Scholar finalist who began entering pageants to earn scholarship money for school, an aspiring doctor who plans to use her platform to fight childhood cancer and the only one among five finalists who knew that women won the right to vote in 1920.

Deidre Downs, 24, crowned Miss America Sept. 18 in Atlantic City, N.J., also is a member of a Baptist church with a female pastor in her hometown of Birmingham, Ala.

"She’s just lovely. She’s very gracious and warm. She is not a cheerleader," her pastor, Sarah Jackson Shelton, said of Downs. Downs joined Baptist Church of the Covenant, a downtown Birmingham congregation affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a little over a year ago.

Shelton said she first came to know Downs, however, when Downs was in high school and attending another Birmingham congregation, Riverchase Baptist Church, where Shelton was associate pastor.

Downs left Alabama after earning a volleyball scholarship to University of Virginia, but lost her scholarship when she left the team to devote more time to her studies. She transferred to Samford University in Birmingham, graduating magna cum laude in 2002 with a history major.

Downs and Shelton reconnected after Martha Ann Cox, a board member of the Miss Alabama organization and longtime Samford employee, suggested the socially conscious young woman looking for a place to worship visit Baptist Church of the Covenant, where Shelton came as senior pastor in 2002.

Downs’ worship attendance has been irregular because of travel since winning the Miss Alabama pageant this spring. Shelton said Downs manages to attend about once every three or four weeks and belongs to the church’s college and career Sunday school class.

She has also spoken at the church on a Wednesday night about childhood cancer, a cause for which Downs’ deep involvement led to her also winning the Miss America "Quality of Life" award, which honors community service and carries a $6,000 scholarship.

Downs, who wants to be a pediatrician but delayed entering medical school a year to compete for the Miss America crown, plans to use her title as a platform to raise awareness about pediatric cancer.

"Children with cancer need a voice, and I want to be that voice as Miss America," Downs said in a press release.

She’ll log about 20,000 miles a month, sharing her message with reporters, civic leaders and millions of fans. The tour started with live interviews on NBC’s "Today" and ABC’s "Live with Regis & Kelly," followed by live appearances on the CBS "Early Show" and on ABC on the "Tony Danza Show." She’ll also find time for the traditional reading of the Top Ten List on "The Late Show with David Letterman."

Downs became involved with the cause of childhood cancer when she visited Camp Smile-A-While, a Birmingham camp for children who have or have had cancer. The experience inspired her to volunteer at the Children’s Hospital of Alabama Cancer Unit. She found the work so rewarding that she started Making Miracles, a program allowing high school and college students to volunteer to work directly with childhood cancer patients.

Learning more about pediatric cancer, Downs turned attention to raising funds for research for treatment, detection and prevention. She organized a "Rock-a-Thon" in 2001 for the local chapter of the American Cancer Society.

In 2002 she got the idea to develop an Alabama "Curing Childhood Cancer" license tag with revenues going toward research and treatment. She submitted the paperwork to state authorities and waited almost a year for the go-ahead last summer to try to get the minimum 1,000 advance commitments for the tag. She was given from Aug. 1, 2003, to July 31, 2004, for the task. According to the State of Alabama, the official total before the deadline reached 2,059.

The plate costs $50. For each tag sold, $41.25 goes to the Children’s Hospital in Birmingham, where 95 percent of children with cancer in Alabama are treated.

Cancer is the No. 1 disease killer of children. More than 11,000 young people are diagnosed each year, and about 2,300 children and teenagers die annually from cancer.

Thanks to research, however, the overall survival rate for all types of childhood cancer is up to 72 percent. Childhood leukemia, once certain death, is now 80 percent curable. More than 400,000 patient-years of life are being saved each year using newly discovered treatments for childhood cancer, according to an information Web site.

Downs also pledged to use her year to improve the image of Miss America a