You can bank on Playmate Deanna Brooks. A slim blonde from the mountains of Nevada, Deanna was managing a branch of Key Bank in Dayton, Ohio when she decided to submit her photos to Playboy. “The bank’s officials were conservative,” says Deanna. “Female employees weren’t even allowed to wear makeup – but customers still came in to look at me.” When her superiors found out about her Playboy spread, our Miss May 1998 lost her job, but by then, she had more work than she could handle with Playboy. “Dayton doesn’t seem so friendly anymore,” says Deanna. “It’s their loss!” Key Bank’s loss was definitely our gain – in addition to her Playmate pictorial, Miss Brooks appeared in several issues of Special Editions, videos and more than thirty bonus pictorials for the Cyber Club. She even leveraged her Playboy fame and snagged roles in The Rowdy Girls, Candy Stripers and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. “With Playboy, I’m my own boss,” she says. “Luck is nothing but preparation meeting opportunity. I want to be happy with whatever I do – but acting is a dream come true!” Talk about return on investment.