Free Preview: Playmate of the Month March 1988 - Susie Owens

As a small-town girl in Sawyer, Michigan, Susie Owens was a tomboy until a late-teens growth spurt turned her into a beauty queen. Now the 26-year-old preschool teacher doubles as a Venus International Swimwear model. Karen's latest moonlighting gig is even more dazzling: Sawyer's pride is now our Miss December. If the lady beside that 1953 Chevy pickup seems familiar, she probably is. You first saw Susie Owens as one of the nurses we featured in our November 1983 pictorial Women in White. She started working at 22 as a nurse in Oklahoma City hospitals, where in seven and a half years she went from delivery-room duty to cardiology and finally oncology - cancer care. Her appearance in Playboy caught the eyes of the producers of an Oklahoma City television sports-talk show, who invited her to host a five-minute segment devoted to health and fitness for women and men. As she says, "I was ready to get out of the illness part of health care and into the wellness area," so the show was the perfect remedy. Her TV stint sparked an idea that came to fruition a year later, right after she returned from a trip to Los Angeles, where she'd noticed that a large number of personal trainers actually made a decent living. <br> She decided to start a fitness business, FemLine, which offers personalized fitness counseling for women in the Dallas area. She's currently offering a lecture series called "Females & Fitness" at a large Dallas health club, and she's negotiating to do a radio show. S...