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April 18, 2001: Class Notes Class Notes Features: Stranded
in paradise Racing
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Tom Ritchie ’94
was hailed as the ideal boyfriend on Fox’s Temptation Island,
the latest offspring of degenerative, “reality” television
programs like The Real World and Survivor that use real people,
not actors, in contrived situations. Known only as “Tom”
on the show, Ritchie was enlisted to flirt with beautiful women
and, ultimately, to boost ratings during sweep months last winter.
Critics condemned the
show as televised prostitution because the 26 single men and women
were paid to flirt with and potentially “score” with the
eight cast members who were coupled, but not married, in real life.
Ritchie, however, had no ethical qualms. These couples “were
at a stage where I think that they should be testing what their
feelings are,” he said in an interview. Despite criticism, 16
million viewers tuned in to Temptation Island’s debut —
one million more than for the Survivor premiere. Taped on an island
near Belize over a two-week period last September, the show was
broken up into seven episodes starting in January. Ritchie joined this summer
vacation in Hollywood’s version of Eden — where bartenders
served cocktails at tiki lounges from dusk until dawn — all
by chance. Fox recruited for the show last August when Ritchie was
working on an Internet start-up in Los Angeles. One night, a scout
approached him on Universal City Walk. Many interviews later, he
landed a spot on the island. “I wanted to be
on the show to do something completely different,” said Ritchie,
a history major, water polo captain, and member of Ivy Club while
at Princeton. “Certainly the idea of having your life on camera
24 hours per day, turning your life into a soap opera, intrigued
me as well.” In one episode, the single
men lined up poolside and the four attached women singled out their
dates for that evening. Three of the four women chose Ritchie, who
was then told to pick his date. He paired off with Ytossie —
who became mired in controversy when the producers discovered she
and her boyfriend, Taheed, had a child at home. “The show is very
real,” he said. “At no point did the producers give any
direction to the singles to break someone up. We were told to live
our lives as we would live them under these circumstances.”
Though Ritchie said he
would use the show to leap onto the screen if given the opportunity,
he said he is not counting on it. Following the show’s taping,
Ritchie launched an online dating service called Luvv.com, and he’s
currently pursuing an M.B.A. and a law degree from the University
of Virginia. In the second to last episode, the boyfriends and girlfriends each chose one single for their “dream” dates — Shannon chose Ritchie — and all other singles were expelled from the island. In the finale, the coupled cast members confessed their transgressions to their partners; and Shannon told her boyfriend that spending time with Ritchie just “made me want you.” None of the tempters won the prize. And for now, Ritchie is back at school, hitting the books instead of on the babes. By Michael Grabell ’03 This story was adapted
from one that originally appeared in the Daily Princetonian.
I’ve always been
someone who when I hear an alarm, has to go see the fire engine,”
says Dawn Boyer Shapiro *82, who is training as a paramedic in disaster
medicine so she can go to places like Kosovo. Four years ago Shapiro
left the more mundane world of university administration to search
for disasters and help save lives. Today, while she’s working
toward her paramedic’s license, she’s also a sergeant
on a search-and-rescue team, a California disaster medical assistant,
a commissioner for emergency preparedness for her city of Lafayette,
California, and a volunteer firefighter in training. As a member of a search-and-rescue
team, one of her “coolest searches was hunting for a downed
plane by homing in on the beeping of its emergency locator device
and triangulating. I helped carry the pilot’s body out.”
She has also looked for homicide victims, lost Alzheimer’s
patients, and kidnapped children. “All my life I wanted
to be a doctor, but I got derailed in college (at Wellesley) and
ended up in urban studies,” says Shapiro, who came to Princeton
when her husband was appointed an instructor in the economics department.
After earning a master’s in urban studies from the Woodrow
Wilson School, she worked for the Alumni Council for six years.
In 1990, with two small
children, Shapiro followed her husband west to Berkeley, where she
worked in university administration but felt herself in flux. Reconsidering
her career path, she recalled the time in Princeton she heard an
instructor’s beeper go off during class. “He was a volunteer
fireman,” she says. “It was a defining moment. I realized
I wanted something exciting, outside, and I liked the idea of a
uniform.” As part of her training,
she must learn about many different medications. “I’m
going to give this drug some day in a very frantic situation,”
she says, describing one of the medications she’s studying.
“Give the wrong drug and you can kill someone. I have to look
up every word. . . . The medicine, the biology, the outdoors, the
excitement. I love it, I love it, I love it.” By Dan White ’65 Dan White is a freelance writer and consultant.
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