When Leanza Cornett was crowned Miss America in 1992, she wasn't thinking of the fame and fortune that came along with the title. She was thinking of something more serious - AIDS.

After being crowned, Cornett began a national tour called "AIDS Affects All," making speeches promoting AIDS awareness.

Cornett got involved in volunteering with AIDS patients when she was 20 years old.

"The reason I got involved was because I grew up on stage," she said during an interview in Indianapolis. "I'm a singer, and since that was such a big part of my life, the AIDS virus has really taken its toll on the entertainment community. . . . And I also heard a lot of people talking about it, but not really doing too much about it.

"Even if I can't donate money, I didn't have money to give, and I didn't have an awful lot of time, I thought that would be probably more useful and would probably help if I was either speaking out or volunteering."

When Cornett started volunteering, she worked at the Serenity House in Orlando, Fla., a pediatric foster home for kids with the AIDS virus. Here, she created the Educational Play concept.

"What I noticed when I first walked in the door at the Serenity House was that these kids were kind of hungry for attention, and they wanted to do the things that kids want to do, like watch Disney movies, or go swimming, or go to the zoo, or go to Disney World, normal kid kind of things. But they weren't getting the opportunity because nobody was affording them that opportunity.

"When I came in, I wanted to be able to teach these kids just how to be kids. And that was kind of where the play issue came in. You know, teaching a child, but since these kids weren't used to it, since they didn't have that as a real part of their life, I wanted to help them be kids, and that's really what we did.

I went in and played. They got to pick whatever we would do for the day. If they wanted to go to the zoo, I'd take them to the zoo. If they wanted to watch movies all day, if they wanted me to read to them, that's exactly what we did.

"For hours and hours and hours, these kids got the chance to just be kids," former Miss America said.

Cornett says she is now concerned with research and treatment because almost 2 million people in the United States have AIDS.

"I think that it's most important that we pay a lot of attention to prevention," she said. "It's kind of like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

"If you nip it in the bud, or you go into high schools or elementary schools and talk about safer sex, and teach kids and teach adults about appropriate types of behavior . . . and just infiltrate and inundate the school systems, as well as the churches and organizations, I think that in the long run it's going to help.

"Maybe we won't need research and treatment later on, because there won't be as many infections and as many people spreading the disease.

"Right now in New York, the leading cause of death in women from age 18 to 34 is AIDS. So there are a lot of women out of there, first of all, who don't even realize they're infected. Second of all, who still don't have enough education and enough knowledge to empower themselves and to take action. Whether it's to encourage the men they're with to put on a condom, or to stop taking drugs and not sharing needles, or whatever they're engaged in, the information has not gotten out to women.

Before Cornett became involved in the Miss America circuit and her fight against AIDS, she lead a more humble life. She lived in a small town in southwest Virginia in the Appalachian Mountains, with her dad, who was a coal miner, and her mom.

Cornett said her parents couldn't afford to send her to college. Her mother suggested she enter beauty pageants to try to win scholarship money.

"I decided to go ahead with it . . . not thinking that I would win even a local pageant, much less Miss America four years later."

As Miss America, Cornett worked the entire year, from September to September. She had one day off every month, and got Christmas and Easter off.

"There are a lot of things, sacrifices, that are involved in being Miss America - but so many benefits that the sacrifices are really outweighed by the benefits."

Cornett came to Indianapolis for the Superstar Awards Benefit, to receive an award for her work with AIDS patients.

At the banquet, she gave a speech in which she said: "Don't think that one person can't make a difference - that one individual, one voice, one smile, one hand, one thing can't make a difference - because each person can make a difference."

EDITED BY: Ilene Potasnik, 15