Artz was recently named National American Miss California Elite 2026, a competitive statewide title she earned after a consecutive decade with the organization. Photo courtesy of Reesa Artz

SACRAMENTO, CA (MPG) - On most weekday mornings, Reesa Artz can be found in a school health office, taking a temperature, refilling an inhaler, advocating for a student during an IEP meeting, or sitting with a student who just needs a quiet minute. On weekends, she might be at a food literacy event, teaching childbirth education, behind a microphone at a community fundraiser or on a video call with tribal health partners.

This year, she is doing all of it wearing a crown.

Artz was recently named National American Miss California Elite 2026, a competitive statewide title she earned after a consecutive decade with the organization. National American Miss is a personal development and community service program that emphasizes public speaking, volunteerism and leadership for young women, and Artz has grown up inside it, competing, mentoring and returning year after year to a program she credits with teaching her how to walk into a room and advocate for something bigger than herself.

“That stage taught me how to think on my feet, hold a room, and trust that I belonged in it,” Artz said. “I use those skills every single day.”

The rooms she walks into are almost all here. Artz's roots run straight through this community: she attended Mariemont Elementary and Sierra Oaks before graduating from St. Francis High School, and she was a Girl Scout from kindergarten through high school, earning her Bronze, Silver and Gold Awards with her mother, Angela, serving as troop leader.

Those years pointed her toward a career in care. Professionally, Artz is a registered nurse with the Sacramento City Unified School District, where she serves Title 1 students, young people for whom the school nurse is often the most accessible health provider in their lives. She is also a graduate of the Duke University School of Nursing and was selected as one of Duke's “Young and Rising” for 2026, which highlighted the top 40 young alumni making impact in their fields.

Beyond the school health office, Artz is a birth and postpartum doula, a childbirth educator and a perinatal behavioral health coach, supporting families through pregnancy, delivery and the tender months that follow.

That work has now become her scholarship. Artz is a third-year PhD candidate in Indigenous and Rural Health at Montana State University, where she holds an NIH-funded translational research training fellowship. A Chippewa Cree tribal member from Rocky Boy Nation in Montana, she is building and piloting an Indigenous doula training curriculum in partnership with the California Rural Indian Health Board, research aimed squarely at the maternal health disparities facing Native families.

For all of that, the title year looks less like a résumé and more like a calendar. Artz is spending it doing what the sash is actually for: showing up with love and lots of heart. Farmers markets. Nature centers and neighborhood parks. Family festivals. Fundraisers and galas. Most of her days, she says, come down to the same small thing, noticing what someone needs before they've had to ask.

She learned that at home. “Everything I know about caring for people, I learned watching my mom,” Artz said. “She showed up for me, her work, strangers, her neighbors, anyone who needed her. She never called it service, she just called it being there, and she's still the person I'm trying to be.”

Artz is just as direct about what a decade of competition gave her, and impatient with the assumption that it is about appearances. The stage taught her how to be interrupted and keep going, and how to walk into a room of strangers and make the case for something that matters. The same skills work at a bedside with a frightened family and at a table where policy gets decided.

“Every ambitious woman I know has been told at some point to take up less space,” she said. “This organization spent ten years teaching me the opposite. We all are so worthy and deserve to take up space and achieve boldly.”

In November, the decade comes full circle: Artz will represent California at the National American Miss national competition.

“I'm not walking in there alone,” she said. “Every family I've cared for, every kid in my health office, this community, my mom, I get to carry all of them with me. That's truly the honor of a lifetime.”

Whatever the result, the year ahead looks the same to her. What she wants people to take from it has nothing to do with a crown, it's the simple, stubborn belief that everyone has something a community needs, and that the only way to find out what yours is is to go looking. Dream as big as you want, she says, then find the place that needs you, and go.

Artz is available throughout her title year for community events, school visits and volunteer service, at no cost to local organizations.