Spotlight on Ohlone
Student scores $500 on ‘Price is Right’
By Ryan Richmond, Staff writer.
Thursday, April 10, 2008 — Monitor.
If you tune in to “The Price is Right” on CBS April 24, the contestant who guesses the price of the poker table will be Tomas Ortega, the Ohlone student who ended up winning $500.
Ortega, 20, a broadcasting major, went to Hollywood on March 23 with three friends. “We were going to Magic Mountain, and we said we might as well try to get on ‘The Price is Right.’”
The next morning, they got up at 5 a.m. and went to the CBS studios on Fairfax and Hollywood Boulevard. They had to stand in line for two and a half hours to get “priority numbers,” then come back at 12:30 p.m. to wait in line again until 4 p.m. to get into the studio.
“When we got inside, I was acting kind of crazy, and that probably got me on the show,” he said.
After he won the poker table, Ortega said he almost won a Chevy HHR. Ortega said the car was worth $18,210, but he guessed $18,995.
Ortega said after his part of the contest was over, he was arguing with members of the City College of San Francisco softball team about which team was best, theirs or the Ohlone team. “I was doing something stupid, but I heard from a friend later that Drew Carey (the host of the program) told me to ‘shut up.’ I didn’t hear it, though.”
Will he do it again? Ortega said the rules say he isn’t eligible until 10 years from now. Will he do it then? Ortega said “Maybe.”
