Flagler College Playmate

The brunette worked for several years at a Jacksonville Hooters and has posed in Maxim.

She started modeling when she was 5, and over the years she’s gone skimpier and skimpier. So when a Playmate friend suggested last year that Croft shed all for the magazine, she agreed.

“I’ve been in bikinis and lingerie for a long time, so it wasn’t that big of a change,” said Croft, a 25-year-old majoring in communication.

A few months later she was on a Playboy set. Now she is the magazine’s Miss July.

The magazine with her summer-themed spread will be released today. In a telephone interview from the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, she said she was excited about the release.

But it took a little convincing to get her family back home in Jacksonville on the same page.

She didn’t tell them about it at first, and when she did they were shocked. She said that now they’re as excited as she is.

“We never had the magazine around the house when I was younger, so they didn’t really know,” she said. “But it’s very classy.”

How classy Flagler College administrators think it is wasn’t clear.

College spokesman Brian Thompson said he hadn’t heard about Croft’s centerfold. After calling a few college officials, he said the school had no comment.

Tracy Halcomb, chairwoman of the college’s communication department, said she wasn’t surprised to hear about Croft’s Playboy appearance.

Croft’s stints with Hooters or Hawaiian Tropic consistently took her away from her schoolwork, Halcomb said. But she wished Croft well and said she was a very nice young woman.

“Now that she’s making some money, hopefully she’ll remember Flagler College,” Halcomb said, noting the department is aiming to construct a new building on campus. “We’ll call it the Hugh Hefner Communication Center.”

Croft said she hopes to get her degree in December but doesn’t plan to pursue the communications field. Instead, she hopes her appearance in the magazine will be a springboard for a lucrative modeling career.

Like many women who end up at the Playboy Mansion, she also has her sights set on Hollywood. Unlike many of those women, she’s not dreaming big: Her only acting aspiration is a role on the soap opera The Young and the Restless, a show she’s loved since she can remember.

“I want to be on those little magazines in the checkout lines in the grocery store,” she said.

Aside from modeling, she said being a housewife is fine with her. And her boyfriend, who also lives in St. Augustine, might just have to get used to the idea of dating a Playboy centerfold.

“He’s a little bit hesitant about it because I guess he’s never had a Playmate girlfriend before,” she said.