For Ellen Oplinger and Friends, the Price Was Right!
In this scene shot from the TV screen, Oplinger turns to her front row friends for guidance on which numbers represent the price of the car.
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3/19/2004
Contact: Bill Giduz 704/894-2244 or bigiduz@davidson.edu
You could say that Ellen Oplinger ’06 has a lucky streak. Based on what we knew already, and what we now know, no one would call you crazy. Two years ago Oplinger opened a pack of M&M candies and found the code printed inside was worth $3,000.
But it turns out the candy wrapper was just the warm-up act. Oplinger’s experience in LA over spring break tops the M&M story by a mile!
Let’s begin at the beginning…. “So where do you want to go over spring break, Ellen?”
“Well, how about going to see my favorite-in-all-the-world game show host Bob Barker in Los Angeles? And I think I’ll try to convince a bunch of other Davidson students to go along with me!”
The enterprising Oplinger placed ads all over campus inviting people to fly to L.A. with her to attend a taping of “The Price Is Right.” She tempted them with a round-trip flight price of just $220, and the promise of their own personal “Davidson (heart) Bob” t-shirt. She ended up collecting a party of nine, including eight students, a staff member, and an outsider—Lukas Adams ’04, Steve Clugston ’04, Roland Foss ’05, Gray Lyons ’04, Chris Morales from the bio department, Hak Park ’04, Sam Spencer ’07, and a friend of Park’s who wore one of the t-shirts and became a surrogate Davidsonian for a day.
Oplinger leaps for joy as Bob Barker announces she's won the car!
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They had an “L.A. experience” at lunch soon after their arrival, when the actor James Woods sat down beside them. They spent the rest of their first day at Venice Beach, where Oplinger commissioned a henna tattoo on her lower back with the word “Bob” printed inside a heart. “Anything to give us a leg up!” She was psyched. The group arrived at the CBS studio in West Hollywood at 1 a.m. to begin an overnight vigil to guarantee their first place in line. The early-bird strategy paid off, and the Davidson crew ended up with front row assignments when seats were doled out at 6 a.m. to the 200 people waiting at that time.
After a quick nap at their youth hostel accommodations, they returned to the studio at 10 a.m., wearing their “Davidson (heart) Bob” t-shirts. Producers explained the procedure and the rules, and screened the crowd for possible contestants. “We tried to act excited for them,” Oplinger said, so she made sure they saw her new tattoo. Finally the doors opened and the audience was herded into “Price Is Right” land.
After years of watching the show on TV, Oplinger was shocked. “On TV the stage looks huge,” she said. “But it’s really a tiny room. It’s just the camera angle that makes it look big.”
The rest went by in a blur. The announcer pumped the crowd up to a frenzy, and started calling out names to “Come on Down!”
Travel mates hoist Oplinger at the show screening. (l-r) Gray Lyons, Steve Klugston, Sam Spencer, Hak Park, Roland Foss, and (below) Chris Morales
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“Ellen Oplinger! Come On Down!”
“I didn’t even hear him say it,” Oplinger said. “I just saw my name on the cue card, so I screamed and jumped up there. Things were going so fast I didn’t know what was happening.”
She and three other contestants were asked to guess the price of two wet suits and two surf boards. Oplinger bid $1,000, and the other three were below that. The right answer? $1,300! “Ellen Oplinger, you get to play our game with Bob Barker!”
She rushed forward and kissed Bob on the cheek. As the curtain opened, he said, “Let’s see what we have for Ellen to win today… A new 2004 Dodge Neon!”
To win it, she had to select the correct price of the car from five columns of possible numbers. As long as she got at least one number right each round, she got to keep on guessing.
Round one… she got one number right. Round two… another two numbers right! Her friends in the front row were going crazy screaming suggestions. The other members of the audience were going crazy, too. Ellen was looking down at her friends for advice. Bob was saying, “Hurry up, we haven’t got all day!” Then she got the fifth number right! She took a deep breath and guessed the last number….
$16,235?!? Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! “You’ve won a new car!”
“When it lit up, I went crazy!” she said. “I was jumping around, and hugged Bob again. I could only grab his waist though, he’s twice my size.”
Assistants whisked her off stage and showed her where to sign prize forms. At the end of the show the Davidson crowd celebrated with a Mexican dinner, and Ellen picked up the tab. “We had talked before the show about splitting our prize if anyone won anything, but I think everyone was fine with me buying them dinner,” she said.
The rest of the week-long trip was a pleasant afterglow. They biked from Santa Monica to Venice Beach, ogled houses of the stars in Bel Aire, watched rich and famous guests stroll down the red carpet into the Oscars ceremony, and even serenaded Stevie Wonder during his walk. Several of them even took a side trip to Las Vegas.
Back at Davidson, Oplinger and friends tried to keep her good fortune secret while she obtained a video copy of the show. Then they invited friends to watch it one night in the Alvarez College Union. “I saw me win the car,” she said. “I couldn’t get over how much I was smiling. I was stuck in that face. It looked like I was paralyzed. I also couldn’t get over how tanned Bob Barker looked in his makeup.”
The show is arranging for delivery of the prizes to Oplinger’s home in Spring House, Pa., just outside Philadelphia. “The car will be a big step up for me,” she said. “I’ve been driving a 1992 Jeep. I don’t know what I’ll do with two surfboards and two wet suits in Pennsylvania, though!”
Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,600 students. Since its establishment in 1837, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine. Davidson is engaged in “Let Learning Be Cherished,” a $250 million campaign in support of student financial assistance, academic resources, and community life.
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