Denise Garrido managed to hold on to her Miss Universe Canada title for a solid 24 hours before officials yanked it away. It seems she was crowned by mistake.
"My heart sank. I was so sad," Garrido said of learning that a typo was to blame for the mix-up — and that she had actually come in fourth, not first.
It seems a mistake was made when the judges' handwritten scores were being inputted into a computer, and the real winner was Riza Santos, who was previously the third runner-up.
Miss Universe Canada spokesman Andrew Lopez said an independent third party typically handles the scores, but being unavailable for Saturday's event led officials to pin the task on a pageant employee.
A third-party audit conducted after the fact found the error and notified Miss Universe Canada.
One 2013 pageant contestant complained that the "typo fiasco" has tainted the entire competition.
"How we do we know that everything else wasn’t wrong?" Marwa Ishow told the Toronto Star. "The whole pageant seems like it was staged."
As for Garrido, she will receive a consolation prize in the form of a few appearances alongside the real Miss Universe Canada, but is too old per competition rules to compete again.
"I will always have the memory of being the 24-hour queen," she said.
[photos via Miss Universe, Twitter]