Maggie Rizer
Maggie Rizer
Super-model, native of Watertown
Maggie Rizer was born in 1978 in Staten Island, New York. When she was fourteen her openly-gay father died of AIDS.
As a senior in high school in Watertown, Maggie sent her picture to the Ford Modeling Agency and a representative asked if she would come to New York City during the summer for an open call. Rizer attended some college classes, majoring in accounting, but dropped out after her modeling career began.
In 1997 she was shot by famous photographer Steven Meisel for the cover of Vogue Italia. She was hired for an ad campaign for Calvin Klein and her career took off, doing shoots for Prada and other famous manufacturers of clothing and traveling all over the world for photo shoots and modeling shows.
At the height of her career she earned upwards of $30,000 per shoot. When her finances became too much for her to handler herself she hired a financial manager, who took fifty percent of her finances. Her step-father, John R. Breen; an insurance salesman, convinced her that she was throwing money away and that he could manage her finances for only five percent. After some reservations she agreed.
In 2002 Rizer found that she had lost all of the money that she had saved and earned during her career. Breen had gambled away the model's entire finances of $7 million while playing Quick Draw at The Speakeasy and other local bars in Watertown. Quick Draw is a state-run keno-like video lottery game. Breen then began bouncing checks before he was arrested and served a prison sentence for the crime. Breen blamed alcoholism and an addiction to gambling.
In 2005 Rizer sued Jeff Graham, the owner of The Speakeasy, and various banks and others. A local newspaper did an expose, and the state lottery opened an investigation into how Graham handled Quick Draw, after which the bar's license was suspended. The Quick Draw license has since been restored, but the bar itself is under a new name and ownership.
Rizer lost focus after this, gained some weight and began losing modeling jobs. But she eventually turned her life around, exercising again and losing the weight she that had gained, and again began working modeling jobs and appearing in other media.
She has appeared in movies and is an AIDS activist.
Julie Rizer, an older sister, is a well-known criminal-defense attorney in Watertown.