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The 26-year-old ballroom dancing aficionado, who has a second-degree black belt in Taekwondo — and is a classically trained pianist to boot — was still happy the next morning after waking up to spend the day filming Miss Universe Canada 2013 promotional spots and basking in the sequined-glow of her beauty queen glory.

“I still couldn’t believe it,” she says.

And then the unbelievable happened: event organizers called Ms. Garrido into an urgent meeting at 10 p.m. Sunday.

“It started out on a positive note,” Ms. Garrido says. “Then they told me there had been a miscalculation, that the wrong winner had been found and that the runner-up was the actual winner.”

Then they asked the aspiring doctor from Bradford, Ont., to hand back her crown. And her Miss Universe Canada sash.

And all because of a glitch, all because some Miss Universe Canada judge screwed up when inputting the handwritten scorecards for the gowns and bikinis and skill testing question components of the three day competition into a computer, a mistake that, upon remedy, knocked Ms. Garrido from top spot to 3rd runner-up — ending her Ms. Universe Canada reign after 23 hours.

“It was shattering,” she tells me, over her car’s speakerphone, while driving from her parents’ home in Bradford to Toronto. “I was sad. I was disappointed. And I was embarrassed, really embarrassed, because everyone back home had been celebrating. Getting over my own ego has been the hardest thing.

“But being angry would not have changed this situation.”

I guess not.

Controversy is no stranger to the Miss Universe Canada franchise. A year ago the hubbub involved Jenna Talackova, a statuesque blond who happened to be born a man, and who was initially barred from the competition before organizers relented. Ms. Talackova was voted Miss Congeniality.

“It has been an interesting couple years, that is for sure,” says Andrew Lopez, a spokesperson for the event. “Denise has been an incredibly gracious young lady in dealing with this.”

You see, life is about seeing your glass as half full, about being an optimist, Ms. Garrido tells me. Stuff, even bad stuff, even nightmarish nutty stuff like, say, being crowned Miss Universe Canada on a Saturday night and being told on the Sunday that you have to give back the crown because of a judge’s typo, happens.

And when it does happen it can make you bitter, if you let it. But not if you are Denise Garrido, a young woman whose ability to spin a raw deal into a positive picture is a sparkling example of a true beauty — no crown required.