'Joe Millionaire' contestant glad she's out.

Byline: KAREN McCOWAN The Register-Guard

There's a reason one candidate on Fox's latest hit reality show, "Joe Millionaire," may seem familiar to local viewers.

The dark-haired flight attendant, who was "millionaire" Evan Marriott's first pick to advance to the second episode, is a 1993 graduate of South Eugene High School.

A sharp-eyed classmate contacted The Register-Guard after recognizing Brandy Sullivan from their days at South, where Sullivan played volleyball and rowed on the crew team. Her parents, Mike and Stephanie Sullivan, confirmed that hunch.

In a recent telephone interview, Sullivan said she was "relieved" to be eliminated in the second episode of the show, in which 20 women vie for the affections of Marriott, a hunky construction worker masquerading as a millionaire.

"I felt lucky to slide out the back door," Sullivan said.

She said she had no clue about the show's "millionaire" component until arriving on location in France for the one-month shoot.

Unlike some contestants who responded to casting calls, Sullivan said, she was recruited for the show after a Fox producer spotted her waiting tables at a Santa Monica, Calif., restaurant during a Sept.11-related airline furlough.

"I was very, very hesitant," she said. "I told them I'm really conservative, that it's not my style to be on a reality TV show, that I don't want to be an actress or a model."

Fox representatives told her they were looking for single women who love to travel for a dating show they were then calling "The Big Choice," Sullivan said.

"They convinced me it would be the trip of a lifetime," she said.

She had misgivings about two weeks before taping was to begin, when she learned that the show's female-male ratio would be 20-to-1.

`But then I found out that the location would be Paris, and I thought, `Fabulous - I've never been to Paris!' ' she said. "I pictured us staying right next to the Eiffel Tower, dining out at Parisian restaurants."

Instead, the constantly chaperoned women were sequestered in a hotel outside the city and driven in the middle of the night to a chateau where the show was filmed.

Once there, each woman was required to wear a microphone every waking moment - even when they went to the bathroom, she recalled.

"It was very intrusive," she said. "And it was all about the editing."

While snippets that aired on "Joe Millionaire" suggested that the women saw themselves as rivals for a wealthy man, Sullivan described a different reality, at least until she was eliminated from the cast.

"Money was never, never the issue," she said. "And for me, the best part of the show was meeting all the other women."

Sullivan said she and other nonsurvivors didn't realize they would be on her own, expense-wise, once they "got the boot." They had to pay for their own hotels and meals for the duration of the one-month contract period, even though they were still under Fox supervision and not allowed to go out alone.

"We did have a stipend of 1,000 euros (about $920), but I'd understood that was to pay our rent while we were gone," she said.

Sullivan first heard the "Joe Millionaire" title when ads for the series began airing Thanksgiving weekend.

"My mom and I were laughing about it together," Sullivan said. "I would never do a reality show again. But I can put it down as something I've done in my life."

Sullivan, who has a degree in exercise and sports science from Oregon State University, is back to full-time work as a flight attendant. She also teaches fitness classes in Santa Monica.

CAPTION(S):

Brandy Sullivan is a flight attendant from Santa Monica, Calif.