Amanda Hope is one tough cookie. Pale-skinned, with red hair and bright green eyes, she was raised the eighth of nine foster kids in Cameron, an aluminum-and-rail town in central Texas. “My parents decided to stop taking in foster kids, then one day, they got a call from someone at the agency,” she says. “They said, ‘We have a little girl here who needs a whole lot of love.’” Amanda grew up much like other children in Texas – going to church, doing her chores and playing outside, nodding through her clarinet lessons – and in high school, an Army recruiter suggested that she try out for the Army band. “A friend gave him my name,” she says. “I was in the library, reading fashion magazines. Originally, we were told we were going to Saudi Arabia, but we shipped off for Germany instead.” As a soldier with the 8th Infantry Division, Amanda fell easily into the rank and file – she’s likable as apple pie, but she doesn’t let anybody mess with her, either. “As a woman in the army, you have to do a good job, but it doesn’t mean you can’t be feminine," she quips. “Military doesn’t mean male.” After a chance encounter with a photographer in a shop, she found herself in another unique position: offered the chance to pose for Playboy. “I was on a military exercise when I got the news,” says Amanda. By the time her issue came out, she’d been honorably discharged, and enjoyed a few months of civilian status before her promotion to the station of Playmate. Miss July 1992, reporting for duty. While stationed in Europe, Miss Hope developed a taste for deutsch hospitality – on what she calls “the $11 tour”, she traveled the German and Austrian countrysides on furlough, offered free room and board as a soldier – but she’ll always have a place in her heart for the Lone Star State. “Oh man, you gotta be from Texas to understand it,” she drawls. “It’s always warm there – the weather and the people!” If they were all as warm as Amanda Hope, we’d be Texas-bound in a hot second.