Price was right for Waltham resident who won $39K in prizes on game show
Published 10:37 am Wednesday, February 27, 2013
The calls, texts and Twitter and Facebook messages kept pouring in for Nicole Jax Tuesday morning as she appeared on The Price is Right.
“By the first commercial, I had [26 messages],” said the Waltham native. “My mom had 36 notifications on Facebook.”
By the end of the show, there were too many to count, and she had won a prize package worth $39,296. Jax, a 2012 graduate of Hayfield High School and now a freshman at South Dakota State University, appeared on the game show Tuesday, winning a three-night stay in Los Angeles and a tour of the NCIS set, a six-night stay in Washington D.C. and a private tour of the city, and a 2013 Dodge Charger SE. She also won a 56-inch 3D TV and nine seasons of NCIS in the first round of prizes.
“Basically, it was a big shock,” she said.
Jax was in L.A. with about 30 other students from her school’s Dairy Club, and they got tickets to a Jan. 8 taping of the show. She watched it Tuesday with her parents and grandparents in Waltham, and many of her friends were watching, too. She said a class at Hayfield even took the period off to watch.
She was one of the first four contestants chosen, and won the second prize — the TV and NCIS box set. After that, she played for a chance to win $10,000, but lost on the third round. Then, she spun the Price is Right wheel, beat two other contestants, and made it to the Showcase Showdown. There, she guessed her package was worth $36,000, a difference of $3,296, and beat the other contestant to win it all.
“My friends [in the audience] were saying $36,000, but I thought that was low,” she said. “But it turned out I was right to trust them.”
Jax leaves for L.A. on Monday, but said she’s forfeiting the trip to D.C. for tax purposes, and because she has been there twice in two years. She’s not sure if she’ll keep the car or sell it.
—Look for more on this story in the Sunday print edition of the Herald.