Ex-Miss USA Rima Fakih Avoids Jail, Gets Probation in DUI case

Miss USA Rima Fakih(centre) in court in April

    Rima Fakih,the first Arab-American to be crowned Miss USA, avoided jail during sentencing Wednesday in her Michigan drunken driving case, an experience she described as "very humbling."

        Judge William McConico put Fakih on six months of probation, ordered the former beauty queen to perform 20 hours of community service and said she must pay $600 in fines and costs. Fakih also must attend an alcohol safety class. 

       The 26-year-old pleaded no contest last month to driving while visibly impaired in Highland Park, an enclave of Detroit. 

     Fakih faced a maximum penalty of 93 days in jail. "I'm very relieved" not to have been sentenced to serve jail time, Fakih said. "But let's say it got to that point. I was willing to pay the price it took because I knew I made mistakes."

      Fakih has said she wasn't drinking the night of her arrest in December, but two police breath tests put her blood alcohol content at more than twice the legal limit.Fakih's family moved to New York from Lebanon in 1993 and then to the Detroit suburb of Dearborn 10 years later.She became the first Arab-American to win the Miss USA Pageant in 2010.