Before deployment, Two Harbors woman makes "The Price Is Right"

If you thought the producers of the game show "The Price Is Right" randomly select participants for the CBS daytime staple, you'd be wrong.

They interview audience members, looking for personal stories for inspiration along with enthusiasm.

And Rachel Skahl had quite a story to tell when she found herself at a taping in May.

Mother of two daughters, one with special needs. Full-time student. Three jobs. Twelve years in the Air National Guard with a pending deployment to Kyrgyzstan.

And if that wasn't enough, there was the beaming smile and "bouncing off the walls" for producers to consider.

"I've always lived my life busy," she said.

The Two Harbors graduate and resident was the second person chosen from the audience in the May 5 taping that eventually aired June 2. For a whole month, she could only tell friends and family to watch and see what happened on the show this month. Contestants are barred from revealing details from tapings.

She had the winning bid on the first item presented at "Contestants Row," an exercise bike, and bounced onto the stage. She didn't win her game with the prize of "A new car!" -- a sporty Dodge Challenger -- but spun and hit the dollar slot on the "Big Wheel," besting the two other spinners and getting a spot in the "Showcase Showdown."

Skahl had been attending a Business Professionals of America conference in Anaheim, Calif., through Lake Superior College. A colleague asked if she would like to go see the game show instead of sightseeing at the beaches. "Heck, yeah," she said quickly.

Skahl is at least the second contestant from northern Minnesota to be a contestant on the show this spring. A May airing featured a college student from Cloquet getting onstage and winning a prize but losing at the spin-off.

Skahl has been watching the show since she was a kid, which is why she drew a breath of slight lament that the current host is Drew Carey and not Bob Barker, the original host of the show that has aired since 1972.

But Carey was very gracious, she said. And the Cleveland native knew that home for Skahl was next to Lake Superior, telling Skahl in the showdown that the sailboat package she was about to guess the price on would look good on the big lake.

"That sailboat got me. I don't know sailboats," Skahl said last week.

That's why her guess for the package was $15,000 over, and her opponent won by going $1,000 under on his showcase. "Even my friends said they would have gone over."

In the end, she won $1,000 for her spin at the wheel and the $2,000 exercise bike.

She laments not getting the Dodge Challenger. "I want one now," she said. "That's a goal."

Her failure is a lesson to anyone watching the game show at home and dreaming of their chance.

Pricing items accurately is difficult with the audience shouting and people behind the cameras offering encouragement. "Take that second breath," she advised others who might find themselves on a game show. "Don't let the audience throw you."