NEAH BAY — Both are named Nicole Marie Parker. But one is in jail — and the other is a festival queen who volunteers at a community center and wants to teach preschoolers.
West End community members have confused the 18-year-old reigning Makah Days queen with a 19-year-old woman with exactly the same name who was jailed on Aug. 7 on a charge of methamphetamine possession.
The Makah Days queen, who lives in Neah Bay, is not the same Nicole Marie Parker who is in custody in the Clallam County Jail in Port Angeles.
The charge brought against the woman jailed for methamphetamine possession, and who Clallam County Court documents identify as a transient, was reported in the Peninsula Daily News on Aug. 13.
Since Aug. 13, phone calls have flooded the offices of the Makah Tribal Council, with people asking that the crown be taken from Parker, Tribal Councilwoman Debbie Wachendorf said.
Innocent and drug-free
Parker, who obtained her crown by selling the most raffle tickets for last year’s Makah Days, said she wants people to know she’s innocent and drug-free.
The daughter of Annette Morales of Neah Bay and Charles “Moose” Parker of Clallam Bay, she graduated from Neah Bay High School earlier this year.
She plans to begin studies of preschool education at Peninsula College in the spring.
Parker volunteers with the tribe’s culture program at the community center where she teaches younger Makah traditional dances.
She and others in the program will dance at the 82nd annual Makah Days this weekend in Neah Bay.
