She would’ve been better off over on the set of Lost, but Aya Sumika still made a memorable debut as Linh Tamiya on the quickly cancelled NBC series Hawaii. She was easily the most memorable of the series’ island cops—especially after an early episode where her character was caught naked in a Jacuzzi with fellow detective Sharif Atkins. As a Japanese American, Aya even took some heat for perpetuating Asian stereotypes with that scene. Sadly, that’s about all the attention Hawaii ever got, and the former Juilliard-trained ballet dancer soon found herself looking for another job. And with a body and a face like that, the 5’9” lithe and luscious lovely didn’t have to look for long, landing a role as a bikini-topped surfing doctor on an episode of The O.C. in 2005. In 2006, she was cast as Stella in the Ken-Olin directed TV movie Introducing Lennie Rosewith fellow-hottie Abigail Spencer. She hit series success when she earned the part of FBI Agent Liz Warner in the CBS hit series Numb3rs, a character she played for 40 episodes from 2006-2010. While the bikini scenes were sparse in this one, the Seattle native did strip down to her very sexy bra and boy-short panties in one episode, proving her dancer’s body hadn’t gone astray. Numb3rs was her last acting gig before she headed into the ribbon industry—yes, there is a ribbon industry. She and her husband (high-school sweetheart Trevor) co-own Midori Ribbon, a ribbon-oriented fashion and design company based out of Los Angeles.
