This babe's father is in prison for supplying a lethal dose of meth and her mother's an habitual drunk driver- wait until she finds out she shares a porn star's name. LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

WWW- Jennifer Steele saw her face flash huge over Times Square, signaling she had just won cash, fame and opportunity on an MTV reality show.

"Like a fairy tale," said Steele, 20, a UW-Whitewater journalism major.

Steele has endured family traumas to justify the Cinderella-by-way-of-American Idol ending that came Dec. 19 in New York City.

Her family name will finally make news for something good, she noted on the finale of MTV's "Miss Seventeen."

Her father, Daniel V. Steele, 42, is in prison for his role in supplying a lethal dose of methadone to an 18-year old Portage woman in 2003.

Her mother, Jacqueline A. Steele, 44, is a repeatedly convicted drunken driver with a long criminal record. She has been in jail and will go back soon, Jennifer said.

To win on the show is one thing for Steele, who is from the Wisconsin Dells. To list the winnings to a newspaper reporter is another.

"I feel like such a dork," Steele said.

Ahem. A dork with fame and new money.

Steele-whose braces and mousy, barely-there voice don't betray her drive and self-confidence-will collect $25,000; a scholarship; an internship at Seventeen magazine and a spot on the magazine's February cover, among other prizes both solid and intangible.

Steele drove to Minneapolis last spring after seeing an ad that convinced her she was "unbelievably perfect," for the show, she said.

She beat a field of national applicants and 16 other women who made the show judged by Atoosa Rubenstein, editor-in-chief of the young women's magazine.

Rubenstein praised Steele's "down-to-earth" manner and unquestionable survivor status.

"Every time I talk to her, I learn something else about her past that makes me think, 'Oh my gosh-you are so strong!'" Rubenstein said in a column on www.seventeen.com.

Family members-including her grandmother, who introduced her on the show's finale-were main motivators for Steele to win, she said.

"My family definitely kept me going. I kept thinking of how strong we all are and how the success would be a success for all of them," she said.

Steele plowed through weeks of filmed challenges in New York City, where the show taped last summer before it aired this fall.

"There were maybe two moments I thought I might get cut, but I always felt really strong in my gut that I was going to be sticking around," she said.

Steele watched the show on MTV each week with her roommates at UW-Whitewater this fall, barred from disclosing that she would stand among two finalists in Times Square in December.

"It was excruciating," she said.

Her new campus fame puts her in a league with Johnny Lechner, the UW-Whitewater student who has built a cottage industry out of not earning an undergraduate degree in 12 years of college.

Steele isn't sure about the suggestion that she and Lechner could be UW-Whitewater's celebrity power couple.

Some people are afraid to bother her on campus because they think she's a celebrity, Steele said.

"People just kind of give me double-takes a lot," she said.

"So nobody talks to me. It's weird."

Steele plans to speak publicly about addiction, choices and self-confidence while attending classes this spring.

"I think that it'll give me a really nice platform to talk to people," she said.

More immediately, she hopes to meet pocket-sized Colombian pop singer Shakira at MTV's New Year's Eve party.

In the beginning Steele knew she had to try.

"If I don't do this, I'm going to regret it for the rest of my life," she thought.

She knew she was right to be confident when the young crowd in Times Square erupted at her victory.

"It was proof to me that the confidence that I had was not unnatural," she said.

"It was proof to me that if I really believe in something, I can make it happen."