Just weeks before Stuart beauty queen Kellie Lightbourn was crowned Mrs. Universe 2026, she was a frightened mom seeking answers to help her 18-year-old son Niko, who has autism and a rare genetic disorder, Cornelia de Lang syndrome, which causes profound developmental delays and a severe intellectual disability.
In tears leaving the Social Security Administration office, the 51-year-old attorney and multiple beauty pageant winner spied the headquarters for the ARC (Advocates for the Rights of the Challenged) of the Treasure Coast, which is the largest agency in the region assisting people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Lightbourn flipped a U-turn into the ARC’s parking lot on South Kanner Highway in Stuart.
“I just showed up on their doorstep, and I said, ‘I don’t know what to do. I need help. What services do you have?’” she recalls, her voice rising as she speaks of Niko, who was born in 2008 with his twin sister, Landyn, in Tampa, where Lightbourn was raising her family and building a successful career in television news and reality TV.
Her broadcast endeavors included working as a legal correspondent and anchor at WFTS-TV; hosting Lifetime’s Designing Spaces; and appearances on E! Entertainment, Extra, and Animal Planet.
In 2023, Lightbourn and her twins moved to Stuart to join her new husband, Shawn Luttenauer, and his sons, 18-year-old Tyler and 15-year-old Chase, whom she calls her “bonus sons.” It was something of a homecoming.
The pair were college sweethearts, having met at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, where she graduated with a B.A. in communications in 1997 before earning a law degree at St. Thomas University College of Law in Miami and receiving a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy. During those early college years, Lightbourn, who grew up in Broward and Palm Beach counties, lived with her mother in Martin County.
On that fraught January day at the ARC, Lightbourn, whose brown eyes flash with emotion as she pulls back a mane of model-perfect auburn hair, says she knew where she was; she’d spent decades championing kids with intellectual and developmental disabilities while scoring pageant title after title: Miss Virginia (her first major title at age 19); Mrs. Florida; Mrs. USA; and Mrs. Galaxy; to name a few.
“I was familiar with ARC from Tampa because I had done volunteer work with them,” Lightbourn explains. “But when Niko turned 18, I’m like, ‘I don’t know what to do, and that’s what prompted me to walk into the door of ARC.’”
She adds: “I was desperate as a mom who didn’t know what to do, and I don’t normally feel like that. I normally get things done. I normally can attack stuff, but I just felt like I wasn’t going to do it right.”
She absolutely came to the right place to help her son, says Keith Muniz, president and CEO of the ARC, which assists individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Martin, St. Lucie, and northern Palm Beach counties with state-of-the-art residential, vocational, educational, behavioral, and other health-related programs and services that ensure choices, opportunities, advocacy, and family support.
“Her son is on the [autism] spectrum and eventually we want to help him in his long-term care needs, and the rest of his life, at whatever level he may need,” Muniz says. “Sometimes it’s supported living, helping people live in their own apartments, or maintain jobs.”
Turns out, Lightbourn’s outreach to the ARC in Stuart might be one of the best things to happen there since 2010, when then-state Rep. William Snyder (and retired Martin County Sheriff) secured $800,000 in state funds to expand, refurbish, and hurricane-proof its adult day training facility that doubles as a special needs shelter.
That’s because after touring the facility, Lightbourn volunteered to emcee the ARC’s annual fundraising event and vowed that if she won the international Mrs. Universe title on May 6 in Orlando, she’d return to make her first public appearance and use her global platform to champion their mission to help people with intellectual and developmental disabilities thrive in their communities.
“I said, ‘I don’t know if I can help you, but let me tell you who I am,” Lightbourn said during her visit. “I believe in what they are doing in the community, and I can help.”
The ARC is involved in all sorts of social enterprise ventures, such as Stuart’s Alice’s Caring Café, which has a culinary program to teach food service and catering skills. It also contracts with the Florida Department of Transportation to provide sanitation management at the rest stops and weigh stations on I-95. The not-for-profit agency is on tap to add an acute health-care home at the site of its Therapeutic Intervention Program Community and Event Center in Port St. Lucie, according to Muniz.
Terry Neil, the ARC’s director of development, says they were all rooting for Lightbourn, who won Mrs. Universe by beating Mrs. Spain, Alona Brodska, selected as first runner-up in the beauty contest open to married, divorced, and widowed women from countries around the world between the ages of 18 and 55, according to the pageant’s website.
To Lightbourn, her success winning pageant isn’t about rewarding the prettiest face on stage. It’s using the visibility that comes with a crown to open doors for causes she’s always championed and to give a voice to people and organizations doing extraordinary work.
“I do it because it’s a tool, and it gets people’s attention. I think the reason I continue to win, especially right now, is because it’s so much bigger than me,” she says, “I have an ulterior motive, I do.”
True to her word, on June 9, Lightbourn, sporting a ball cap and her silver-and-white “Mrs. Universe 2026” sash, launched her year-long reign at the ARC in Stuart, signing autographs, taking photos, and playing games with individuals attending an adult day training program, as local TV and newspaper reporters looked on.
“This advocacy is not just a platform for me, it’s my life,” she told journalists that day. “I’m honored to use this title to elevate awareness, celebrate inclusion, and support families like mine on a global stage.”
And she’s just getting started, Lightbourn says.
She’s launching a new empowerment program at the ARC, inspired by her former Tampa-based project called BeYOUty Camp that Lightbourn organized with Shriner’s Children’s Hospitals. Daughter Landyn has been involved with this service work.
This new Mrs. Universe project, “Unlimited: Crowned for a day. Empowered for life,” kicked off August 12 with a mock run held at the ARC in Stuart, featuring makeovers, photo shoots, positive-image affirmations, and a trio of enthusiastic participants: Lizzie, Emily, and Sarah.
After opening pink baskets brimming with jeweled tiaras, hairbrushes, hand mirrors, cosmetics, and lip balm, all three volunteers were treated to makeovers—hair and makeup by Landyn—followed by a photo shoot with Lightbourn, posing in pageant crowns and “Mrs. Universe 2026” sashes.
For Emily’s fashion pics, she added a huge set of pink feathered wings that towered over her shoulders, as she smiled broadly under bright camera lights.
“They couldn’t be more beautiful, more joyous, and it’s just an awesome thing to see,” says Muniz, watching the photo sessions. “I’m very proud of everything Kellie’s doing. I don’t even recognize them, what she’s sharing with them, and it’s great.”
The plan, he says, is to offer Lightbourn’s empowerment program in Stuart, and later at their community center in Port St. Lucie.
For Muniz, too, who beams speaking about their fortune in landing Lightbourn as their goodwill ambassador, says her advocacy brings “incredible recognition and visibility” for the population they serve.
“There’s a broad spectrum of people who have a lot of physical, medical needs, to people who are very minimal in the level of care and needs that they have. They’re working in the community, they’re tax-paying citizens, and they’re giving back to the community,” he stresses.
“So, it really puts the spotlight on all of that. And that we are, in fact, a worthy cause. We don’t take that word lightly; it’s a very important word: it’s a worthy cause.”
Of no fault of their own, Muniz adds, “these individuals have some challenges, and we’re helping them just live meaningful lives in the community … and Kellie has helped spotlight that in a way that we never would have been able to do without her.”
Meanwhile, Lightbourn is retiring from pageants, but she’s not done competing. She’s eyeing a different, more political stage.
Her next move, she says, is motivated by experience with divorce and custody proceedings to draft Niko’s Law, a bill she wants Florida lawmakers to enact “to help safeguard families and children with disabilities.”
To that end, Lightbourn says she’s filed election papers as a Republican to campaign in 2028 for the Florida House District 86 seat currently held by state Rep. John Snyder (R-Stuart), who will be term limited out at the end of that year. If elected to the Florida House in November 2028, she would serve a two-year term representing parts of Martin and Palm Beach counties.
“My intention is to finish this reign, do as much as I can in the community, and then continue my work in the community by running for state representative,” Lightbourn says.
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