Minto woman came on down to win cash and a new car

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This article was published 20/02/2019 (1890 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

BRANDON — The price was right for a Manitoba woman, and now she has a new car and an extra US$1,000 in her pocket.

Charlene Nault won the prizes during her appearance on the game show The Price is Right, in an episode that aired Monday. She said she was so excited that she struggled not to spill the beans to all her friends about the episode, which was taped in December.

“After the show, you have to be quiet about it, you can’t go home and tell anybody or else you forfeit your prizes, so it was pretty hard for me to not say anything,” said Nault, who is from Minto, a community south of Brandon.

Nault had planned a week in Las Vegas with her mother for her 50th birthday. After growing up watching The Price is Right with her mother and grandparents, they decided to make the four-hour drive to Los Angeles to see a taping of the show. She said she wasn’t expecting to be picked out of the 300 people in the audience.

“It was quite the crazy experience, especially already being in Vegas for a week, so I didn’t sleep for a lot of the time we were gone.”

Nault won the car — a Nissan Sentra — in a game called Rat Race, where she had to guess which coloured rat would win a race. She said she picked the pink rat because she was wearing a pink shirt.

She almost didn’t get the chance to pick a rat in the first place. Nault said she had to guess the right price for three products. She missed the first two but correctly guessed the third item — a 3D pancake maker worth US$300.

“When I saw it on the stage, I looked at (host) Drew (Carey) and I went ‘What is that?’ and he’s like, ‘I don’t know what that is.’”

She later won the US$1,000 by spinning the giant wheel in the Showcase Showdown, but the contestant right before her — also a Canadian — won US$25,000 in the same game.

While Nault won the prizes, she said she still has to deal with American taxes on her game-show winnings. She said she has to pay around C$12,000 in taxes to get the car, which itself is worth around $28,000. Nault said she’s planning to sell the car she bought last year to afford the new one.

“Worst-case scenario, I’ll take the US$1,000, but I’m really hoping to get the car,” she said.

Nault said she’s already planning another trip to Los Angeles to see another taping of The Price is Right.

“It was just a crazy, crazy experience… I can’t even believe it.”

— Brandon Sun