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A Charlotte cocktail waitress and a UNC Chapel Hill graduate student will be among the 25 women vying for the affections of Ben Flajnik when ABC's "The Bachelor" returns on Jan. 2.
Blakeley Jones, 34, of Charlotte and Emily O'Brien, 27, of Chapel Hill will appear on the popular romance reality show featuring Flajnik, 29, a winemaker from Sonoma who was the runner-up in the show's last edition, dumped at the end by Ashley Hebert.
Jones, a native of Rutherfordton, has a long-haired Chihuahua for a pet; her favorite actor is Edward Norton; and she has tattoos on her foot, stomach, back and arm, ABC said in an online profile.
Among the other contestants this season are three nurses, a model and a personal trainer.
ABC said Wednesday that O'Brien gets the season's first kiss, but as a "germ-conscious epidemiologist," she reaches for the sanitizer beforehand. A Ph.D. candidate who enjoys Zumba dancing, O'Brien also does a rap song on the first episode that she wrote especially for the occasion, the network said.
Charlotte is a popular recruiting ground for "The Bachelor." Last spring, Emily Maynard of Charlotte got the proposal from second-time bachelor Brad Womack, but the romance didn't last. Kimberly Coon, a Charlotte marketing specialist and former Top Cat dancer, was sent home by Womack earlier in the same season.
In 2007, Kristine Heffelfinger, a Charlotte fitness instructor, was eliminated before the final rose.
