Amy Toliver’s Double Life As Nursing Student By Day, Striptease Dancer By Night
By Robin Leach
Las Vegas Sun
Blonde bombshell Amy Toliver leads a double life to fulfill an incredible dream. The Phoenix resident sheds her clothes several times each week nightly at “iCandy Burlesque” in Planet Hollywood’s Miracle Mile Shops and at the new SHe nightclub in Crystals. By day, she dons scrubs for nursing school to follow in her mother’s footsteps to become a trauma emergency room nurse.
It’s an only-in-Las Vegas story of a striptease showgirl by night earning money to put herself through school. I asked Amy how she juggled the schedule of being in an operating room one moment and peeling off her clothes the next.
“I am not quite a nurse yet. I have another year juggling both. I am in nursing school, but there are so many more requirements at this stage than just being a nurse. I travel weekly back and forth between school in Phoenix and the stage in Las Vegas. Right now, my show nights are Friday through Sunday night in Las Vegas, and then the rest of the nights I spend in Arizona.
“I just pretty much break up my travel between flying and driving depending on the week. It was hard at first, but now I am used to it. I have to manage my time really well and know my priorities.”
Amy cut back one of her nights in “ICandy” at Saxe Theater because it meant an drive to Phoenix when the curtain came down and right into scrubs when she reached the Valley of the Sun.
She said: “I was dancing on Monday night, getting off at midnight, and then driving all through the night to make an 8 a.m. lecture for nursing school. That was just too hard. It could have been dangerous, too. There’d be times when I’d want to fall asleep and pull over on the road to grab a quick nap. I cut out Monday night at ‘iCandy’; it works a little better for me.
“It is still a little crazy, though! I do ‘iCandy,’ then go across the street to SHe at CityCenter and dance until 3 in the morning.”
Nursing school and a mortgage are an expensive proposition. Amy explained: “Right now, I am at $90,000 that I owe back to the government, so I am using the two night jobs to pay back my school loans. Fortunately, my tuition is half paid for by my scholarship.
“I have to maintain a 3.7 GPA to keep my scholarship, so not only is going to nursing school and dancing in Las Vegas hard, but I have to make sure that I get really good grades, or I lose my scholarships. … I am a really good student, just shy of a 4.0. Nursing is my priority, and I love it.
“It also is tough because I have a mortgage. It is not like I am fresh out of high school and have no bills. I have accumulated bills over the years, so I have to maintain and make sure that I am still paying them.
Amy, who has few inhibitions onstage with her sexy routines and is one of the James Bond unclothed beauties in Jeff Kutash’s new production at SHe, says she thought about becoming a doctor but has decided on nursing and will join the U.S. Army Medical Corps.
She told me: “Being a nurse is so much more personal. There are so many different specialties that you can go into without having to go to school all over again. I can pretty much practice nursing anywhere. I wouldn’t be able to dance and to be a doctor at the same time; it is not as flexible. I’d like to continue nursing and dancing.
“When I am done with nursing school, I am going to do the traveling nursing for a while, accepting three- to six-month contracts with hospitals in different states. So, I want to travel and I want to dance and, after that, I want a contract with the Army serving my country in the military as a nurse.
I had to ask why blood and battered bones didn’t trouble the dancing beauty: “My mom was a trauma nurse for 30-plus years. … As a little girl, I always knew that I was going to be a nurse, I knew that I would want to follow in my mom’s footsteps. I knew that I wanted to do something that I could better the world, that I could help people in a major way.
“My mom set a really good example for me as a young girl. When I told her I was going to nursing school, she asked me what kind of nurse I wanted to be. I told her I wanted to work in the emergency room, trauma. She looked at me with a really serious face and asked if I was sure. She said it takes a really special personality to be able to be a nurse who does that. Then she said, ‘If anyone can be a great trauma nurse, it would be you because you have that personality.’
Amy, who was an NFL cheerleader for four years, said her first dance mentor was a Las Vegas showgirl appearing in “Splash” at the Riviera. She encouraged Amy to dance here to pay her tuition, and she joined “iCandy” in its debut a year ago at the Tropicana before it moved to Planet Hollywood.
She summed up: “I realized there is a lot of work in Las Vegas for me, and I love it. It is a lot of fun dancing in Las Vegas. I have been commuting to school in Phoenix for a year, and I have a little over a year left. My graduation will be May 2014. I just have to keep driving safely back and forth for a while longer.”
