- April 25, 2024
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Hawaiian Tropic founder Ron Rice looks back on his daughter Sterling's career, up until her current role in A&E's 'Rodeo Girls.'
BY WAYNE GRANT | STAFF WRITER
Ron Rice, longtime Ormond Beach resident and founder of Hawaiian Tropic, thinks his daughter, Sterling, and his ex-wife Darcy LaPier, Sterling’s mother, have a hit TV show on their hands.
The two are starring in a six-episode reality show on the A&E network, which premiered last week. In the show, LaPier, who owns a ranch near Portland, Ore., is training for an upcoming rodeo.
The show follows Darcy as she tries to prove that she didn’t buy her way in with an expensive horse but has real talent. Sterling is a novice rider in the show but becomes more involved as the episodes progress.
“Darcy rides those horses from 40 to 50 miles an hour," Ron Rice said. "She’s a world-class rider. All the girls (in the show) are champions or former champions.”
He enjoyed the show's premier.
“Darcy looked great,” he said. “I hear ratings are great. That’s what I’ve been texted by people in the know. Maybe people are getting tired of Duck Dynasty.”
And following some time spent in Oregon, Rice says the show is not fictional.
“I think it’s more reality than other reality shows,” he said. “There’s a little bit of Hollywood to it, where they puff a little bit.”
Rice, who sold Hawaiian Tropic about six years ago, famously mixed the first batch of suntan lotion in a garbage can while working as a lifeguard. From that can, he built a multimillion-dollar empire.
“I still have the garbage can,” he said.
When he delivered the first bottle of lotion on the beach, he was driving a van “held together with safety pins,” he says, and he saw a “silver bullet” go up in the sky. It was July 16, 1969, and the bullet was the rocket taking Buzz Aldren, who later became a good friend, to the moon.
Rice's favorite star, however, has always been his daughter Sterling, who took off from Ormond Beach, where she was born in 1990, to make it in Hollywood.
Through his connections, she got an appearance on "Baywatch" when she was younger, appearing three times, which launched her career.
In a 17-year period, Sterling had 43 credits in TV and movies, Rice said. They included “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” the movie “Wild Hogs” with John Travolta in 2007, and a movie filmed in Greece with Cuba Gooding Jr. and Roger Moore, called “Boat Trip.”
Sterling went to college at 17, at the University of Central Florida. She now attends Portland State and will graduate soon. Following in her dad’s entrepreneurial footsteps, she has started making custom jewelry.
“She’s had some success with the jewelry,” Rice said.
But that's no surprise. Rice has always guided his daughter, beginning when she was 18 months old and he taught her to ski,
“By the time she 7, she was a double black diamond skier,” he said.
Rice does not have an active business anymore but spends a lot of time advising others, including Sterling.
“I have Sterling taking some business courses,” he said.
Rice sold the Hawaiian Tropic pageant a few years ago, but he says that’s what propelled Hawaiin Tropic brand sales “into the stratosphere.”
“It was all free publicity,” he said. “I called it guerrilla marketing.”
Rice plans to stay in Ormond Beach.
“I’ve been here 57 years and I’m going to be here until the cows come home,” he said.
